By Juliet Boelhouwer
The Roundtable was on President Biden’s administration. There was quite a bit of agreement on what was generally good or bad, but disagreement on whose fault it was. No one at the roundtable believed pulling out of Afghanistan was executed well, but there were questions over whether this was Biden’s fault. He did after all inherit a bad situation from Trump, but he was the one making decisions. There were also questions of whether the United States should be involved in Afghanistan in the first place and what responsibility the United States has to the rest of the world. Everyone agrees inflation has been a major problem through the administration, but to what degree this is Biden’s fault, Congress’s fault or just the natural cycle of the economy is still debated. The roundtable had a general consensus that Biden’s handling of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was pretty good. The United States supported Ukraine, but Biden did not escalate the war. This of course brings other issues into the conversation, like why did the United States help Ukraine when other warring countries received no support. Why did the United States not care as much about the Tigray War that started before Russia invaded Ukraine? Some people say racism makes the West care less about African countries, others point out the Tigray war was a civil war, which is different than one country invading another. Others noted that the geo-political ramifications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are far greater than those of the Tigray War. Overall it is hard to say people are satisfied with Biden’s presidency thus far. The general feeling seems to be that he should be doing more, but people are glad he is not overdoing it. One member described himself as “radically ambivalent” to Biden’s administration, to explain his passion over the issues and his indifference over what Biden has done to address them.
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