That was the question Nicolas Sarkozy asked after meeting Barack Obama. Sarkozy, who has just been sentenced for corruption, was on to something. Rare is the leader who knows exactly how to demonstrate the difference between appearances and reality. Most get the two the wrong way round. That’s because they often mistake resolve in ‘doing the right thing’ for strength. Witness Joe Biden’s announcement the other day that he’s letting the Saudis off the hook for murdering a US resident inside their own consulate. Biden paired it with a punitive raid on Iranian proxies in Syria – the sort of tit-for-tat action that hardly anyone, apart from the victims and a handful of moralists, notices anymore. Both made him look weak.
He’s not solely to blame for that perception. Biden made his career on public displays of zeal and zealotry. The style for which he was known counteracted the pity people felt for him following the personal tragedies he has endured and with the great personal strength he must have had to endure them. Today, his public face retains the latter but has reduced the former – which is probably for the best because the American people and many others around the world have had enough of zealots in the White House. But this, too, makes Biden look weak.
With his wife and his chief of staff hovering over him in public, and his vice president often photographed standing in the wings with cheer in her eyes and, presumably, a toothy smile behind the mask, the American president looks like he is finding it hard to relax in his job. The Senate, controlled by his own Party, are threatening to vote against some of his nominees and favoured legislation; world leaders from Angela Merkel to Hassan Rouhani are snubbing him; and his own people are already beginning to tire of giving him the benefit of the doubt. Joe Biden is, at last, a patient man and he may prevail in the end. But this isn’t the point. Rightly or wrongly, the weakness with which he is perceived is coupled with that of his country and its position in the world. Someday people will stop giving them all the benefit of the doubt. And then, as any politician knows, a real demonstration of power will be irresistible.
That wouldn’t be unheard of for a president prone to geriatric over-exertion. The old men running the Soviet Union were said to have begun taking Ronald Reagan seriously after he capped the knees of the air traffic controllers. Old Harold Macmillan – who didn’t exactly appear or sound like a pillar of strength – was right when he said that the basic quality any politician needs is ruthlessness. Reagan got it. So did Nixon, but Nixon got caught. Getting caught, as Mr Sarkozy now ought to admit, is the ultimate sign of weakness. So said an adjutant to both Nixon and his predecessor when he pointed out that Lyndon Johnson was guilty of worse crimes than any that took place on behalf of ‘Watergate’. ‘Vye don’t you youse it?’, Henry Kissinger asked him. Because, the man said, one didn’t speak ill of the dead.
Today’s students of Machiavelli are praising him for his moral stance, and ruthlessness may be out of fashion in the circles Biden and his Party move in. But one day, probably soon, ‘doing the right thing’ may mean a bit of kneecapping. Let us just hope for everyone’s sake that Joe Biden doesn’t get caught.