“Biden’s fate is blowing in a much fiercer wind than confronted either of his high-wire predecessors. The chances of his reaching his goal is diminishing with every television news feed from the Gaza Strip,” writes “The Gadfly” columnist ROBERT MACKLIN. 

DURING his election campaign 160 years ago, Abraham Lincoln likened himself to the great Charles Blondin walking a tightrope “with all that was valuable to America in the wheelbarrow he was pushing before him”.

The comparison with Joe Biden’s current high-wire act is irresistible. 

Blondin and Lincoln succeeded in their most famous feats – Blondin over Niagara Falls and Lincoln to the open doors of the White House. But America’s most admired president could not avoid the horror of civil war virtually on arrival.

President Biden’s fate is blowing in a much fiercer wind than confronted either of his high-wire predecessors. The chances of his reaching his goal is diminishing with every television news

feed from the horror called the Gaza Strip. 

The winds of a religious war know no boundaries. And in his wheelbarrow is the squalling child of America’s democracy.

Should he fall – either figuratively or literally – Biden will be replaced in the Oval Office by Donald Trump, whose vision of presidential governance is self-aggrandisement and revenge. 

And in the latest polls he is leading Biden in those five or six states that make the difference between winning and losing the key votes of the Electoral College.

The polls were taken just before the October 7 Hamas atrocity that sparked the Israeli over-reaction displayed in sickening detail on our TV screens each evening. Not that our response matters much in the presidential campaign. The real problem for Biden and his precious bundle in the wheelbarrow is the college-educated young voters who strongly supported him in the last bout with Trump.

Unlike Biden, they refuse to tolerate the Israeli extremists who condone the bombing of hospitals, schools and refuges sheltering the Gaza civilians and their children. 

This doesn’t mean they will vote for Trump; it’s enough that they stay at home or choose a third-party outlier to put the Republican nominee-in-waiting over the top. 

They are not alone in their withdrawal of support for the ageing Biden. The same trend is operating among blacks and Latinos, despite America’s healthy economy and its “soft landing” from the covid pandemic inflation bump. Most notably, David Axelrod, the architect of President Obama’s two successful campaigns, has publicly pleaded with Biden to pass the presidential baton to a younger Democrat or face an ignominious defeat.

Biden is unmoved. He’d been running for the presidential prize since the 1987 campaign; and was not about to sacrifice a single minute of his time at the top.

The consequences for Australia are not confined to our much-touted security relationship with the US. There is a growing gap at the apex of the Labor government towards the Chinese “threat” to stability in the region. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong are diplomats by nature. Their mantra of co-operating where we can, disagreeing where we must and engaging in the national interest is a long-term pathway to peace. 

By contrast, Defence Minister Richard Marles (whose insistence on the courtesy title of Deputy Prime Minister would be comical were it not so ominous) has swallowed the Pentagon perception whole. 

That’s where Donald Trump caucuses with the group he calls “my generals” to confront China with his military might. So Australia’s political stability might well be squeezed in a corner of that wheelbarrow, too.

robert@robertmacklin.com