'Can he win the election?' Biden’s dire political situation spills into NATO summit

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden was nearly through the NATO summit. It was his second-to-last event of the day ? the unveiling of a security framework for Ukraine.

And then, it happened. At the end of short introductory remarks that he read from a teleprompter, Biden accidentally called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by the name of his adversary Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The snafu could not have come at a worse moment. What should have been a slam-dunk event promoting an initiative his administration launched became an unfortunate reminder of Biden's persistent verbal flubs.

At an hour-long press conference shortly after, Biden repeatedly lost his train of thought. In explaining away his earlier Putin gaffe, he referred to Kamala Harris as Vice President Trump.

Biden’s dire political situation was already a focus of the summit. His press conference, a lifeline.

NATO attendees left Washington with a sinking realization: they needed to take more responsibility for their own security and reduce their dependence on the United States.

“I think the general feeling was that after this debate, it would become more likely that President Trump would win the next elections, which accelerated discussions that were already taking place at NATO,” said Bob Deen, a senior fellow with the Clingendael Institute, a Dutch think tank.

Early in the week, on the eve of the conference, Biden had appeared to stabilize. He sent a letter to Democrats telling them it was time to rally around his candidacy. He hammered his critics in a surprise appearance on Morning Joe.

As he celebrated the signing of the 75th anniversary North Atlantic Treaty and welcomed leaders to Washington at the Andrew Mellon auditorium, Biden delivered reassuring remarks.

“He looked quite energetic,” one European official said.

But then, the tide turned. One Democrat after another called on him to consider stepping aside. High-profile skeptics from within his party were the subject of cocktail party gossip and televised news reports from around the world.

Nancy Pelosi. George Clooney. Michael Bennet. Even visitors from European countries could list them off.

Were these two geriatric politicians, Biden and Trump, who are 81 and 78, respectively, the best that America – the backbone of the NATO alliance – could muster to run for president, one visiting official asked.

Even if Biden did have a disease, what Europe cares about is beating Trump, the person said.

“Can he win the election? It's not does he have Parkinson's or dementia, it's can he win the election?” the European official said.

European leaders refused to comment on the record about their perceptions of Biden’s cogency.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg noted, as he spoke to reporters at a roundtable when he arrived in Washington, that he’d met with Biden a few weeks earlier to discuss the terms of the NATO-Ukraine package and a desire to work more closely with the alliance’s Indo-Pacific partners.

“And the fact that we have been able to make all these important decisions, or will make important decisions this week at the NATO summit, none of that would have been possible without U.S. leadership, because (the) U.S. is by far the biggest NATO ally,” Stoltenberg said. “That’s what I have to say.”

But announcements on new military equipment for Ukraine, including F-16s and Patriot missile systems, were not met with the usual fanfare.

The few foreign policy messages to break through were related to the presidential election.

NATO member nations said in their summit communique that Ukraine’s eventual inclusion in the alliance was “irreversible.” The alliance also affirmed steps to bring Ukraine’s security coordination under its control. The actions were part of an orchestrated effort to protect the assistance from a potential President Trump.

European Council President Charles Michel, who met with Biden at the Group of Seven Summit in June, stressed in an interview that he did not want to comment on the U.S. election before adding, “I can just tell you that we work really well with that administration, in the fit of our support for Ukraine, in the fit of many international challenges."

Michel said the Biden administration is sincere in its support for EU integration and believes it is good for the United States. He said he is not convinced that Trump has the same convictions about the role of the EU.

He recalled that when he was prime minister of Belgium, and the NATO summit was held in Brussels, that Trump pushed allies to spend more of their GDPs on defense.

“I remember the difficult debate that we had among the leaders with Donald Trump at the time, and we felt that it could be an attempt to put into question the added value of this alliance,” he said.

It is why the announcements at the Washington summit involving Ukraine were important, he said, because they signal that NATO nations are stronger together and reflect that European nations are spending more than they did before on defense.

Ukrainian officials came away from the summit pleased the alliance had provided the country with long-term security guarantees and put it on a path to membership that would be difficult to overturn, especially after Russia hit a children’s hospital at the beginning of the week in a missile attack.

“There's not even a shade of distraction from major issues related to Ukraine. And also the first question we always received is, how can we help following the horrific pictures we saw on Monday? This was always the first question in every meeting,” said Olha Stefanishyna, the deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration of Ukraine, in an interview.

She said the delegation had a “lively discussion” with Republicans on Capitol Hill about what is happening on the frontlines and Kyiv’s push to check Putin’s ability to launch attacks on Ukraine from Russian soil.

White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters on Thursday that he had not heard world leaders sharing concerns about Biden’s political standing and the possible reelection of Trump.

“What I have heard is they went around the table yesterday,” he said, and that there “was a drumbeat of praise for the United States but also for President Biden personally, for what he’s done to strengthen NATO, especially as president but also over the course of his entire career.”

“And leaders really made a point of reinforcing their gratitude to him on that,” Sullivan said.

At his news conference on Thursday evening, Biden said European leaders are still rooting for him to beat Trump.

“I’ve not had any of my European allies come up to me and say, ‘Joe don’t run.’ What I hear them say is, you’ve got to win,” Biden said. “He’d be a disaster.”

Biden said that Trump’s authoritarian tendencies worry European leaders and that it underscores why he still believes he’s the best person to do the job of president.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: European allies want to know if Biden can win the election