THE FIGHT OF HIS LIFE

Closely observed account of the accomplished yet beleaguered Biden White House.

Whipple, author of The Gatekeepers and The Spymasters, appears to have easy access to the current administration, which, by contrast with the previous one, seems a model of collegiality and efficiency. However, as he shows, there are formidable obstacles. The fight of Whipple’s title is the war in Ukraine, which has the potential to spill out into a larger European and even world war. That gloomy forecast isn’t hyperbolic: CIA director William Burns, twice stationed in Moscow, affirmed to Biden that Putin, as Whipple writes, “was fed up and ready to settle scores.” A fight just as existentially taxing is the obdurate MAGA movement; Trump may go away, but his namesake political movement shows no signs of disappearing—and it was Trump’s Charlottesville equivalency speech that resolved Biden’s decision to run for president. Thanks to MAGA and Trump’s violent rhetoric and incompetence, Whipple shows, Biden’s transitional team was hamstrung, with Trump officials who did help the incoming Biden people working in “a sub rosa operation, carried out under Trump’s nose.” Once inside the White House, the Biden team had to go to war immediately against the pandemic and its financial effects, which have played out in a bout of inflation that no one wanted but that wasn’t entirely unforeseen. Whipple delivers a few dishy bits of inside baseball, including an increasingly difficult relationship between Biden and Kamala Harris, whom Biden characterizes privately as “a work in progress.” (Less guardedly, Biden deems Trump “a fucking asshole.”) Among the challenges incompletely met so far are border policy, police reform, and the intransigence of Joe Manchin and newly minted independent Kyrsten Sinema; among the failures are the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Still, Whipple concludes, the real achievements of the administration are many, and they continue to add up.

There’s more to the current administration than meets the eye, and Whipple is a reliable, readable interpreter.