I have not been a fan of many of Biden's decisions in handling Russia's Ukraine invasion but his results demand some rethinking of what we thought we knew about our role on the world stage.
By Joe not bulldozing to the front (either by accident or design) has worked out to be a stroke of genius. It allowed space for Zelensky's heroics to emerge, it made it difficult for Putin's pre-war strategy of casting this as Russia vs a proxy of the West to have credibility, and in what has to be stunning and a brand new calculation for any country pondering war, Biden stepping back instead of forward allowed the space for his sanctions to play out and then be joined by a vigorous private sector response that isn't getting anywhere near the attention it deserves.
None of these things happen if Biden bulldozes to the front trying to grab all the headlines.
I'll tell you exactly what this reminds me of. I have said for many years that the history books will look back at GHWB's presidency as great. Under absolutely universal public demand for Saddam to be taken out Bush Sr. pulled back. Being the skilled former head of the CIA he was (perhaps our most prepared President for war of all time) he and his team reasoned taking Saddam out would destabilize the region and even though Bush Sr. was extremely sensitive about being called a "wimp" president, he went against his own personal interests and made a spectacularly difficult one in leaving Saddam in place.
Of course as history has revealed Bush Sr. was exactly correct as we found out the hard way when we went back later and undid his stoke of genius and as Sr. predicted, we destabilized the region and made Iran the regional winner.
So now we have Biden and I believe he is following a similar path. He's sitting back taking the shots he knows are coming, but he's proving already to be on point in walking a very fine line. History will be very kind to him as well if he continues to steer us through what looks like will be the final days of Russia as a world power.