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“A safe pair of hands is of paramount importance,” wrote William John Abbott Davies in his 1933 book, “How to Play Rugby Football.”
Davies had reason to know. He has been called one of the greatest rugby players of all time and was acclaimed for captaining England’s team to victory. The term “safe pair of hands” was coined to describe people skilled at cricket before it was applied to other sports, and then to politics.
Four years ago, many Americans saw Joe Biden as the ultimate “safe pair of hands,” whose decades of experience in government would help end the pandemic-induced chaos of then-President Donald Trump’s final year in office. That image of competence has been tested by a string of events since Biden moved into the White House: soaring inflation, surging migration across the southern border, a botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Hamas’ attack on Israel and the subsequent protests on US college campuses.
No president gets to choose the crises they’ll face, but each has wide leeway in how to respond. And since Trump is out of office, he has the luxury of criticizing Biden’s handling of the crises.
“After weeks of silence,” wrote Julian Zelizer, “President Joe Biden finally weighed in on the pro-Palestinian protests that have spread across college campuses nationwide. In his remarks on Thursday, Biden tried to walk a tightrope, mollifying two key campus constituencies: student protesters who are demanding that their universities divest from companies profiting from the Israel-Hamas war, and students who have been sounding the alarm of antisemitism on campus and the occupation of university property.”
“The speech won’t do much to improve Biden’s standing with the younger voters who have been disillusioned with the administration and unhappy with US support for Israel in its ongoing war against Hamas.” Polls show that Biden, who won 60% of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 four years ago, is trailing Trump by 11 points in the 18-34 age group.
Last week, Biden’s administration began the process of reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug. He has also stressed the issue of abortion rights and moved to forgive about $160 billion in student loan debt.
“Certainly, Biden’s policy moves can have an effect, as polls show that young voters are more concerned about bread-and-butter issues like affordable housing and health care than they are about the Middle East,” Zelizer observed.
Yet Republicans moved swiftly last week to reap political gains from the campus protests.
“College quads have been turned into tent cities,” wrote Patrick T. Brown, “university buildings have been taken over by groups of students unfurling banners supporting intifada, and campus protests are pockmarked with calls for violence and antisemitism across the country. This gives Republicans an easy argument to make about why voters shouldn’t place Democrats in charge of our key civic institutions. The attack ads write themselves: If they can’t keep their ivy-covered campuses safe, how can they protect you?”
Jeremi Suri, a historian at the University of Texas at Austin, argued that the GOP’s attack on campus politics isn’t new — there’s a throughline reaching back to George W. Bush’s presidency.
“Some Republican leaders have spent the last two decades condemning everything about the universities that boosted their careers — the expertise on subjects like climate change, the values around diversity and inclusion and even the commitment to teach a full history of our country…”
“The time has come to end what has been a long political war on universities. It no longer benefits anyone, except those who truly want to destroy higher education and build their careers by repressing the free speech of young, talented citizens.”
