Editorial

There was a striking moment on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. Moderator Chuck Todd brought up a poll recently released by National Public Radio and Marist that showed President Joe Biden’s job approval rating at 47 percent, with a disapproval rating of 50 percent. The screen showed that poll in contrast to another NPR/Marist survey from two weeks earlier that showed Biden’s approval rating at 39 percent, with a 55 percent disapproval rating. One poll was done before Biden’s State of the Union address and the Russian invasion of Ukraine; the other was done after.

I despise airing my dirty laundry in public, but I’ll make an exception for kvetching about my clean laundry.

Sometimes, the stars align, and things happen the way they’re supposed to. Like starting Women’s History Month with a wonderful gift to women, or at least the unborn kind.

Ukrainians’ fate in the country’s Russia-perpetrated war is unclear.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine seems to be something of a Rorschach Test for Americans who have the luxury of freely voicing opinions. A Republican candidate for the United States Senate asserted that she identifies more with the Christian values of Vladimir Putin than she does with the values of Joe Biden. Television hosts seem to say something similar. “Genius” is what our most recent former president said about the Russian leader’s machinations. These aren’t healthy human responses.

I despise airing my dirty laundry in public, but I’ll make an exception for kvetching about my clean laundry.

Russia’s war on Ukraine comes at a moment of political weakness for President Joe Biden. His job approval rating is low, low enough to drag down his party’s chances in the midterms, Americans are angry watching their standard of living diminished by inflation, there is lingering frustration about the president’s handling of COVID and there are widespread doubts whether the 79-year-old Biden — the oldest president in the nation’s history — is physically and mentally up to the job.