It’s easy for a candidate to talk tough during an election campaign. It’s a lot harder to act tough if the candidate wins the job.
Evidence of that came last week with President Joe Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia.
When Biden was running for the White House, he promised that he would treat Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” because of its human rights abuses, most notably the 2018 murder of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Last week, though, Biden was doing a cordial fist bump with the lead pariah, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who U.S. intelligence authorities have said approved the killing of Khashoggi because of the writer’s critical coverage of the Middle Eastern kingdom.
Biden has gone soft on the Saudis primarily because he needs their oil in an effort to bring down the high gas prices that could further cripple Democratic chances in the midterm elections.
It’s politics taking precedence over values.
