I have an odd, uneasy feeling about President Biden’s decision to head to Scotland this week for the international summit on climate change.
He flew away from an exceedingly fractious Congress and much public unhappiness with his leadership. I wish he had stayed home.
His trip conjures up my memory of a Johns Hopkins University president, Dr. Lincoln Gordon, who, back in the early 1970s, took an official trip to India at a time when there was widespread discontent among faculty, staff and students about a host of issues.
A general sense of malaise and restlessness hung over the university’s campus.
If pollsters had been interviewing the Hopkins community in those days it is likely that Dr. Gordon would have had the same unsatisfactory poll ratings that President Biden had among the American people as he headed overseas.
But President Gordon ignored the festering problems issues on his doorstep and left the university anyhow, traveling to India with the dean of the School of Public Health to inspect some sort of cooperative health project Hopkins had in India.
In the few days that President Gordon was away the unrest continued to mount, so much so that shortly after he returned, a delegation of faculty marched into his office saying they had lost confidence in his leadership and suggested he should resign. Later that day they delivered the same message to the Chair of the Board of Trustees. In a matter of hours, President Gordon resigned.
Could any such scenario occur on President Biden’s return? Of course not.
But I think I see similarities.
Dr. Gordon, despite unrest at the university, undertook what he thought was an important mission to India or at least he rationalized it that way.
President Biden believes it is important for him to be in Scotland for the climate summit but can he deliver an energizing, compelling and believable message about climate to world leaders given all the uncertainties that exist in Washington on that and other subjects.
In his Build Back Better plan the Climate Change still is a top priority, and that’s good but endless debate about it continues and seems likely to continue. What can he possibly say in Glasgow about our country’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions that is certain, rock solid?
How can he plead for world unity in addressing climate change when he does not have unity at home?
Given his preoccupation with the struggles in his own party, not to mention the opposition party, how seriously will delegates in Glasgow respond to whatever pledges and promises he makes when they know how unsettled and restless his colleagues in the House and Senate are.
When it comes to climate leadership on the international stage, the President’s proclamations may sound hollow and be overshadowed by what’s going on in Washington. I wish he had decided to stay home and taken care of business here, including the critical need to advance our own climate agenda. Such a decision would have underscored, in a dramatic way, his earnest commitment to leadership on the number one issue facing our country and the world.
Right now, the old saying seems timey: “When the cat’s away, the mice will play.” Let’s hope they don’t do too much damage in the President’s absence.
Ross Jones is a former vice president and secretary emeritus of The Johns Hopkins University. He joined the University in 1961 as assistant to President Milton S. Eisenhower. A 1953 Johns Hopkins graduate, he later earned a Master’s Degree at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Sandra Hadaway McClary says
Very interesting read. I heard his speech on TV the other day and wondered if he is in this same world that we are in. When he said he wants all cars, trucks and even school buses to be electric. If he had not shut down the pipeline here we would not be so desperate or in the state we are in right now. Could it be that he and his wife own stock in another country that makes batteries for these electric cars? Mr. Biden keeps saying we need to unite and get along. The United States is a joke to many countries because of some of the things he has said and done. We need a much stronger leadership then what we have now including the Vice President who has done nothing in my opinion. Thank you Ross Jones for making this statement.
DeirdreLaMotte says
What exactly are you looking for in “leadership” ?
Any President who accepts the challenge of what is happening to our fragile planet, and acts accordingly is doing what this nation needs. Period.
Patty Heaps says
Is that a serious question? Define “leadership” in regard to this president. Was it the withdrawal from Afghanistan? Our southern border is being overrun and he is putting them on planes in the middle of the night, dispersing untested and and unvaxxed illegals across the country – is that it? After all, I can’t see a concert without showing my papers. I thought our president showed a little life when he dismissed the story of the $450,000 payments to those who had been separated at the border as “garbage” but then we find out it’s not garbage but yet another decision in which he had no role or knowledge . Perhaps you’re cheering the cancellation of pipelines and the destruction of energy independence in this country – along with the extra $15.00 it takes to fill a car. And those cargo ships stacked up off the coast of California certainly speaks to the leadership of this administration – along with the empty shelves in stores.
It would have made no difference if he had stayed home or gone to Glasgow – after all, nothing says concern about “climate change” like an 85-car motorcade! He is a joke here and on the world stage. It’s painfully obvious that the emperor has no clothes.
Rob Etgen says
Mr. Jones makes a good point about the divisions in America over climate change among other things. But the President skipping Glasgow could only further factionalize the world players and further diminish America’s standing on the issue. The world belongs to those who show up.