The whole world waited to see whether Joe Biden would stumble. He was walking to the podium at the UN General Assembly floor to deliver what could be his last foreign policy speech as president. Days before, Biden had an awkward moment when he got mildly confused on stage with President Modi. Incidents like these meant his audience at the UN was perhaps listening for the slip-up, not to what he said – the problem which the Democrats belatedly realised doomed his candidacy.
Biden admitted that this was the “last time” he would address the room. His tone was avuncular. He shied away from the Manichean rhetoric about a fight between democracy and autocracy which has long animated his speeches. Instead, this address seemed to have been written in order to serve as a eulogy for his career in foreign policy. He began recounting his election as a senator in 1972, moving onto his opposition to apartheid, the September 11 attacks and bringing “justice” to Osama Bin Laden. The former chair of the Senate foreign relations committee has always taken pride in his acumen abroad. And he noted with pride that as president he enacted his long-held belief that America should leave Afghanistan. “Painful as it was,” he admitted.
Content from our partners
