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      Ted Cruz Knows Which Side He’s On

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. I think many Americans would give President Biden reasonably high marks for his handling of the war in Ukraine so far. His speech in Poland, in which he said, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” may have been provocative, and it might have his advisers scrambling to soften it, but it was right, and the right message to send about what should become of Vladimir Putin’s foul regime.Yet Biden still reminds me of George H.W. Bush, who handled the big foreign policy crises of his day with aplomb but wound up as a one-termer. What do you think of the comparison?Gail Collins: Hey, isn’t it interesting to recall that when Bush was fighting to get Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in 1991, the big American ally was Russia? Those were the days, I guess. Just noticed that a Gallup poll found that right after the war, Bush had an 89 percent approval rating.Bret: Bush had the advantage of not having to face down a nuclear-armed adversary — thanks to an Israeli strike on Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor a decade earlier.Gail: And yet he got defeated for a second term by Bill Clinton. We could discuss the possibility of Biden suffering a similar fate — perceptions of a bad economy trump strong foreign policy. Except that Clinton’s genius was in portraying himself as a Democrat who normal Republicans didn’t have to fear. Very, very doubtful the next Republican presidential nominee is going to be able to turn that trick.Do you really think Biden would be walloped if people actually had to compare him to Trump, one on one, presuming the two of them ran again?Bret: I continue to have a hard time believing that Biden intends to run again, when he’s 81. I also don’t think Trump’s going to run — he’s damaged himself more deeply than he probably realizes with his imbecile praise of Putin and his continued election denialism.Gail: This scenario presumes Trump bows to reality. Hehehehehe. Sorry, continue.Bret: Fair point.Assuming your hypothetical turns out to be right, I’d probably place a small bet on Trump winning a rematch, awful as that is. I know Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were able to turn their presidencies around after difficult starts. But both men were naturally gifted political figures in a way Biden just isn’t. Both men were in touch with the center of American politics in a way Biden should be, but isn’t, because he steered too far to the left in his first year. And both men were sailing into calmer seas, economically speaking, as they prepared their re-election campaigns, whereas I don’t see inflation being tamed except at the price of a very steep recession.Would you bet on Biden in a rematch?Gail: Yeah, but I don’t think Biden is going to run. Although he’d be crazy to formally announce this soon and turn the bulk of his presidency into a lame-duck limp.Bret: Don’t agree that he should wait to announce, but that’s an argument for another time.Gail: And I don’t think his problem is steering too far to the left. His problem is that he doesn’t — never did have — that political genius for selling the country, or even his supporters, on a big message.Bret: Give ’em hell, Harry, he is not. But it looks like he’s trying with his plan to tax the very rich. Which … well, what do you think of it?Gail: Ah, Bret, our most reliable, perpetual disagreement. Yeah, given the fact that the richest Americans are now paying an effective tax rate around 8 percent, I would say a minimum of 20 percent on households worth more than $100 million is not a burden.Bret: Probably won’t get past the Senate, may be ruled an unconstitutional wealth tax by the Supreme Court and is reminiscent of the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was supposed to hit only a handful of high-flyers in the 1970s but wound up taxing far less wealthy people. But the proposal could still be … popular. Anything else you’d like to see him do?Gail: I’d also be happy to see him lead a quest to control prescription drug prices: Let Medicare negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry and cap the cost of certain medications, like insulin. It’d be a debate people could really get into.Bret: I think job No. 1 for Biden is to make sure Putin experiences unmistakable defeat in Ukraine. A stalemated truce in which Russia steals more of Ukraine’s coastline, ports and energy riches will only entice Putin to create further crises so that he can “solve” them in exchange for Western concessions. I also think we should accept more than 100,000 Ukrainian refugees; we should welcome as many who want to come here with open arms.Gail: We should talk more about the refugees long term, but of course the immediate challenge is to support them in every way possible.Bret: If Romania can take in more than half a million refugees, we can take in at least as many.Gail: Not going to argue, but right now back to domestic matters …Bret: Biden’s other big task is doing what he can to ease the burden of inflation. We both know that’s mainly a job for the Fed. But the government can still ease all kinds of regulatory burdens that constrict supply chains, like employing members of the National Guards to make up for the trucker shortage. I’m also in favor of the proposal from Maggie Hassan and Mark Kelly — both Democratic senators — to suspend the federal tax on gasoline for the rest of the year, though I would only reinstate it once the price of gasoline falls below $3.50 a gallon, no matter whether that happens before November or after. Gas taxes are really regressive once you stop to think of the bite they take out of the pockets of working-class people who drive back and forth to work.Gail: Short-term gas price relief would be great, as long as it’s combined with long-term plans to fight climate change with energy-efficient cars and more mass transit. Although I know the latter tends to cause many conservative conservatives to shudder.On a completely different but totally fascinating topic: Ginni Thomas. Wife of a Supreme Court justice and now revealed as a very aggressive, deeply crazy activist in the Trump-really-won sideshow.Should we worry about her? Is she dangerous or just astonishingly weird?Bret: Depends on whether you think that being a fever-swamp conservative is dangerous, weird or just the depressing new normal. “All of the above” is also a possibility. Mrs. Thomas attended the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6. She urged the Trump team to feature Sidney Powell, the lawyer with bizarro theories about voting machine fraud. And she wrote Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, some texts right after the election was called for Biden, telling him to “stand firm” against “the greatest Heist in our History.”All of which says to me that I’m glad I’m not the one who gets to hang with Ginni Thomas, but de gustibus non est disputandum, as they used to say. Do you think her behavior should require Clarence Thomas to recuse himself in some cases?Gail: If they get an overturn-the-election case, or even anything relating to the Jan. 6 riots, I would say he’d either have to recuse or be impeached. Otherwise it’s hard to imagine enough pressure building. But I’d be happy to hear I’m wrong. What do you think?Bret: He’d have to recuse himself in those kinds of cases, because the appearance of a conflict of interest is now overwhelming. That said, if every public official were on the hook for nutty things done or said by spouses or family members, it would probably have unintended consequences nobody would like. For instance: Hunter Biden.Gail: I will refrain from dipping back into our Hunter Biden argument except to point out that some experts think he’s getting a reasonable price for his artwork these days. Lips sealed …Bret: But speaking of the Supreme Court, did you watch the Senate hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson? How do you think she did?Gail: Better than great.Bret: Agree. I don’t think her confirmation is in any doubt, especially now that Joe Manchin has come out in her favor, but I enjoyed watching her politely making mincemeat of Ted Cruz, who is a one-man reminder of why sentient people hate politicians. If Republicans were wiser, they’d register their disagreements with some of her positions but vote to confirm her on the principle that she’s fully qualified to serve on the high court. But … they won’t.Gail: Also watching the dreaded Marsha Blackburn asking Jackson to define “woman.” Glad we agree that Republicans aren’t wise.Bret: In the meantime, Gail, it looks like we have a new superinfectious sub-variant of Covid to keep us awake at night. Forget Omicron, now we’ve got Omigod.Gail: I’m going with Dr. Fauci’s theory that it’s not something to get frazzled about. Unless, of course, you haven’t been vaccinated, in which case there’s probably not any point in having a conversation.But I am appalled that Congress didn’t approve the $15.6 billion Biden wanted for tests, treatments and research on vaccines for new variants. If I’m going to side with the throw-away-masks crowd, I’m also going to side with the fund-the-support-system gang.Bret: If we’re going to start thinking of Covid as a relatively normal illness, maybe we need to stop treating it like a national emergency. What do you say we argue about this another day?The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Dispatch From Hungary: Can This Man Oust Viktor Orban?

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      BUDAPEST — On Tuesday, the day that the prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia traveled to Kyiv to show solidarity with a besieged Ukraine, Viktor Orban, the prime minister of nearby Hungary, trumpeted his neutrality at a sprawling rally in Budapest.“We cannot get between the Ukrainian anvil and the Russian hammer,” he said. He accused the Hungarian opposition of trying to drag Hungary to war and vowed to send neither troops nor weapons to the battleground.State-aligned media — which, in Hungary, is almost all media — had been blasting out Kremlin talking points for weeks, and it was easy to find people in the crowd who echoed them. An older man in a traditional black Bocskai jacket described Russia’s invasion as “just” and Volodymyr Zelensky as “scum” before blaming George Soros and the Freemasons for the war. A middle-aged woman expressed sympathy for Ukrainian refugees but accused Ukraine of provoking Russia by oppressing Russian and Hungarian speakers. “You don’t wake a sleeping lion,” she said.Hungary’s opposition — which appears, for the first time in over a decade, to have a shot at ousting the authoritarian Orban — held a rally in Budapest on the same day, on the opposite side of the Danube.I’d met the opposition candidate for prime minister, Peter Marki-Zay, the mayor of the southern Hungarian town of Hodmezovasarhely, the day before, as he worked on his speech. One of his central points, he said, was that Hungary must decide between two worlds: Vladimir Putin’s Russia or the liberal West. “Putin and Orban belong to this autocratic, repressive, poor and corrupt world,” Marki-Zay told me. “And we have to choose Europe, West, NATO, democracy, rule of law, freedom of the press, a very different world. The free world.”Recently, the political theorist Francis Fukuyama made a number of highly optimistic predictions about how Russia’s war on Ukraine would play out. Russia, he wrote on March 10, faced outright defeat, and Putin wouldn’t survive it. Further, he wrote, “the invasion has already done huge damage to populists all over the world, who, prior to the attack, uniformly expressed sympathy for Putin,” including Donald Trump and Orban. The Hungarian elections on April 3 will be an early test of this theory.Just as Israelis from across the political spectrum united to get rid of Benjamin Netanyahu, Hungarians of many different ideological persuasions are working together to defeat Orban, a hero to many American conservatives for his relentless culture-warring.Hoping to neutralize Orban’s demagogy against urban elites, the Hungarian opposition has united behind Marki-Zay, a 49-year-old Catholic father of seven and a relative political outsider.Marki-Zay, who lived in Indiana from 2006 to 2009, often sounds like an old-school Republican. He favors lower taxes and a decentralized government. “We want to give opportunity and not welfare checks to people,” he told me.He believes in Catholic teachings on gay marriage, abortion and divorce but doesn’t think they should be law. “We cannot force our views on the rest of the society,” he said. “One big difference between Western societies and certain Islamist states is that in Western society, church doesn’t rule everyday life.” Some on the left might blanch at the gratuitous invocation of Islam, but part of Marki-Zay’s skill is using conservative language to make case for liberalism.In the coming elections, Marki-Zay is an underdog, but the fact that he’s even in the running is a remarkable development in a country with a system as tilted as Hungary’s. Hungarian electoral districts are highly gerrymandered in favor of Orban’s party, Fidesz. Gergely Karacsony, the left-leaning mayor of Budapest and a political scientist, said the anti-Orban forces would probably need to win the popular vote by three or four percentage points to achieve a parliamentary majority. (By contrast, in the last elections Fidesz was able to win a two-thirds majority with 49 percent of the vote.) The opposition has had to contend with a near blackout in the mainstream media; Marki-Zay said he hasn’t been asked to appear on television since 2019, while Orban has unleashed a barrage of propaganda against him.Fidesz, he said, has convinced its base that the opposition “will take away their pensions, will cancel the minimum wage,” will send their children to fight in Ukraine and will “allow sex change operations without the consent of parents” for kindergartners. These voters, said Marki-Zay, “are just frightened. They hate. I meet such people every day during this campaign. People who are just shouting profanities. You can feel the hatred, and you can see in their eyes how fearful they are of Orban losing the election.”But plenty of voters are still reachable via social media and door-to-door canvassing. Marki-Zay puts his chances at about 50 percent, and while other analysts I spoke to thought his odds were lower, no one wrote him off. A big question is whether the crisis in Ukraine will make voters prioritize stability or turn Orban’s relationship with Putin into a liability. In a recent Euronews poll, 60 percent of respondents said Hungary has gotten too close to Russia and Putin, but that doesn’t mean the issue will determine their vote.Even if Orban wins another term, Peter Kreko, the director of the Political Capital Institute, a Budapest-based think tank, thinks Orban’s dream of creating a right-wing nationalist bloc in Europe is dead. The war in Ukraine has driven a wedge between him and the nationalist government in Poland, which favors an aggressive response to Russia.And a history of pro-Putin sentiment has suddenly become embarrassing for some of Orban’s European allies. Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Rally — who received a nearly $12 million loan from a Hungarian bank tied to Orban — has been put on the defensive over campaign fliers showing her shaking Putin’s hand. Matteo Salvini, the head of Italy’s right-wing League party, was humiliated during a visit to Przemysl, a Polish town near the Ukrainian border, when the mayor confronted him with a pro-Putin T-shirt like one that Salvini once wore in Moscow’s Red Square.There was supposed to be a Hungarian version of America’s Conservative Political Action Conference this month, but it has been postponed until May. In Budapest, many speculated that American Republicans weren’t as keen as they once were to be seen with Orban. “Right now, I think because Orban has so much aligned himself with Russia, I think it’s detrimental to his international image as well,” said Kreko. “And he might win one more round, but I think he just will not be able to fulfill all his authoritarian dreams.”At the opposition rally, which drew tens of thousands of people, a band played a Hungarian version of Patti Smith’s “People Have the Power,” and Smith, who performed in Budapest last year, sent a video greeting. Ukrainian flags dotted the crowd.Bogdan Klich, the minority leader in Poland’s Senate, watched from backstage. He hoped that a Marki-Zay victory would be a blow to anti-democratic forces in his own country. “There is a chance that illiberal democracy, that was presented and unfortunately implemented by Viktor Orban here, will be replaced by traditional European and Atlantic values,” he said. “I mean the rule of law, the respect for human rights and civil liberties, independence of judiciary, etc. This is what we need here in Hungary, and in Poland.”Orban’s rise to power marked the beginning of the authoritarian populist era. If he somehow falls, it might mark the beginning of the end of it.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Emmanuel Macron Goes Low-Key, Finally Declaring Bid for Re-election

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      With a war raging in Europe, the incumbent French president leads in polls and is betting that the French won’t want to change horses in the midst of the Ukraine conflict.PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron declared his candidacy for a second five-year term in the presidential election next month, formalizing his decision with a low-key letter in several newspapers that exhorted the French to let him guide “this beautiful and collective adventure that is called France.”The serene tone of the letter, appearing just a day before the deadline for candidates and 38 days before the first round of the election, reflected the growing confidence of a leader whose stature has grown in several ways since the onset of the crisis in Ukraine.But with a short letter that provided few details on his plans for the country, even as it made clear that the war in Ukraine would not allow him “to run the kind of campaign I would have wished,” Mr. Macron, a centrist, risked being seen as floating heedlessly above the fray on his diplomatic mission to save Europe.“If the gravity of the international situation demands a spirit of responsibility and a dignified opposition, the French people cannot be deprived of a true democratic debate,” Valérie Pécresse, the center-right candidate for the Republicans, declared. “Emmanuel Macron must be held accountable.”The fact is, however, that war in Europe has pushed everything aside, even this election, to the great frustration of Mr. Macron’s opponents. “It’s been months now that the President Macron has been at the service of the candidate Macron,” said Anne Hidalgo, the socialist candidate and mayor of Paris whose campaign has never gained any traction.It has been clear for many months that Mr. Macron was going to run — he told Le Parisien, a daily, in January that “there is no false suspense. I want it.” But he judged that allowing his opponents to dangle while refusing to engage them would play in his favor, especially if he was engaged in matters of war and peace.Although Mr. Macron’s frenetic diplomacy and repeated conversations with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin — he spoke to him again today for 90 minutes — failed to prevent a war, he has been praised more for having tried than he has been criticized for having an exaggerated or naïve faith in his powers of persuasion. If anything, it has added to his stature.Polls show Mr. Macron, 44, with a comfortable lead over his opponents, gaining 28 percent of the vote in the first round of the election on April 10, up from 25 percent last month. Marine Le Pen, the perennial far-right candidate, trails him with 17 percent, Ms. Pécresse at 14 percent, and Éric Zemmour, the upstart anti-immigrant nationalist, at 12 percent.Marine Le Pen, the perennial far-right candidate, on a political show Thursday.  She has been forced to retreat from her adulation of President Vladimir V. Putin. Christophe Archambault/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNo candidate on the splintered left of the political spectrum appears to have a serious chance of reaching the second round on April 24. The two leaders in the first round face each other in the runoff.The president’s one clear admonition to the French was that they must work harder. “There is no independence without economic power,” he said. “We must therefore work harder and lower the taxes that weigh on work and production.”That sounded like early Macron, the bold reformer of 2017 who pushed to free up the state-centric and regulation-heavy French economy. Then the Yellow Vest movement disrupted his plans, and the Covid-19 crisis turned the free-market champion into a “spend-whatever-it-takes” apostle of state intervention.It was unclear how the French, for whom an appropriate balance between work and leisure is an important feature of life, would respond to being told to work harder. The phrase seemed to contain a clear hint that Mr. Macron would return to his stalled attempt to reform the French pension system, which drew the longest transit strike in France’s modern history.“After five years, Macron sends us a letter,” Fabien Roussel, the communist candidate whose lively campaign has drawn some attention, said in a post on Twitter. “But the rising bills come every month. So do stagnant wages and pensions.”Whether economic arguments will gain any traction is, however, doubtful as long as the bloodshed in Ukraine continues.The war was humiliating to Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Zemmour, Mr. Macron’s opponents on the far right, both of whom had expressed high praise of President Vladimir V. Putin and were forced into awkward retreats from their adulation. It had a similar effect on Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has also been sympathetic to Russia’s grievances and critical of NATO. He leads the hard left and is polling behind Mr. Zemmour.Another way the war has favored Mr. Macron has been its galvanizing and unifying effect on Europe, delivering the “Europe-puissance,” or European power, of which he has been the leading supporter.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Mr. Macron in Moscow last month.SputnikThe 27-nation European Union, which rarely achieves unity, has come together on a wave of outrage at Mr. Putin’s brutality. It has provided over a half-billion dollars in aid to Ukraine to buy weapons and related supplies, so breaking a taboo. It has imposed sanctions aimed at causing the “collapse of the Russian economy,” in the words of the French economy minister. It has banned Russian civil aircraft from European airspace.Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 6The campaign begins. More

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      ‘I’ll Stand on the Side of Russia’: Pro-Putin Sentiment Spreads Online

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      After marinating in conspiracy theories and Donald J. Trump’s Russia stance, some online discourse about Vladimir Putin has grown more complimentary.The day before Russia invaded Ukraine, former President Donald J. Trump called the wartime strategy of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia “pretty smart.” His remarks were posted on YouTube, Twitter and the messaging app Telegram, where they were viewed more than 1.3 million times.Right-wing commentators including Candace Owens, Stew Peters and Joe Oltmann also jumped into the fray online with posts that were favorable to Mr. Putin and that rationalized his actions against Ukraine. “I’ll stand on the side of Russia right now,” Mr. Oltmann, a conservative podcaster, said on his show this week.And in Telegram groups like The Patriot Voice and Facebook groups including Texas for Donald Trump 2020, members criticized President Biden’s handling of the conflict and expressed support for Russia, with some saying they trusted Mr. Putin more than Mr. Biden.The online conversations reflect how pro-Russia sentiment has increasingly penetrated Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, right-wing podcasts, messaging apps like Telegram and some conservative media. As Russia attacked Ukraine this week, those views spread, infusing the online discourse over the war with sympathy — and even approval — for the aggressor.The positive Russia comments are an extension of the culture wars and grievance politics that have animated the right in the United States in the past few years. In some of these circles, Mr. Putin carries a strongman appeal, viewed as someone who gets his way and does not let political correctness stop him.“Putin embodies the strength that Trump pretended to have,” said Emerson T. Brooking, a resident senior fellow for the Atlantic Council who studies digital platforms. “For these individuals, Putin’s actions aren’t a tragedy — they’re a fantasy fulfilled.” Support for Mr. Putin and Russia is now being expressed online in a jumble of facts, observations and opinions, sometimes entwined with lies. In recent days, commenters have complimented Mr. Putin and falsely accused NATO of violating nonexistent territorial agreements with Russia, which they said justified the Russian president’s declaration of war on Ukraine, according to a review of posts by The New York Times.Others have spread convoluted conspiracy theories about the war that are tinged with a pro-Russia sheen. In one popular lie circulating online, Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump are working together on the war. Another falsehood involves the idea that the war is about taking down a cabal of global elites over sex trafficking.In all, pro-Russian narratives on English-language social media, cable TV, and print and online outlets soared 2,580 percent in the past week compared to the first week of February, according to an analysis by the media insights company Zignal Labs. Those mentions cropped up 5,740 times in the past week, up from 214 in the first week of February, Zignal said.The narratives have flourished in dozens of Telegram channels, Facebook groups and pages and thousands of tweets, according to The Times’s review. Some of the Telegram channels have more than 160,000 subscribers, while the Facebook groups and pages have up to 1.9 million followers.(It is difficult to be precise on the scope of pro-Russian narratives on social media and online forums because bots and organized campaigns make them difficult to track.)Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square, in Kyiv this week. The square was the center of Ukraine’s 2014 revolution.Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesThe pro-Russia sentiment is a stark departure from during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was viewed by many Americans as a foe. In recent years, that attitude shifted, partly helped along by interference from Russia. Before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Kremlin-backed groups used social networks like Facebook to inflame American voters, creating more divisions and resistance to political correctness.After Mr. Trump was elected, he often appeared favorable to — and even admiring of — Mr. Putin. That seeded a more positive view of Mr. Putin among Mr. Trump’s supporters, misinformation researchers said.“Putin has invested heavily in sowing discord” and found an ally in Mr. Trump, said Melissa Ryan, the chief executive of Card Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation. “Anyone who studies disinformation or the far right has seen the influence of Putin’s investment take hold.”At the same time, conspiracy theories spread online that deeply polarized Americans. One was the QAnon movement, which falsely posits that Democrats are Satan-worshiping child traffickers who are part of an elite cabal trying to control the world.The Russia-Ukraine war is now being viewed by some Americans through the lens of conspiracy theories, misinformation researchers said. Roughly 41 million Americans believe in the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to a survey released on Thursday from the Public Religion Research Institute. This week, some QAnon followers said online that Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was simply the next phase in a global war against the sex traffickers.Lisa Kaplan, the founder of Alethea Group, a company that helps fight online misinformation, said the pro-Russia statements were potentially harmful because it could “further legitimize false or misleading claims” about the Ukraine conflict “in the eyes of the American people.”Not all online discourse is pro-Russia, and Mr. Putin’s actions have been condemned by conservative social media users, mainstream commentators and Republican politicians, even as some have criticized how Mr. Biden has handled the conflict.“Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is reckless and evil,” Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, said in a statement on Twitter on Thursday.On Tuesday, Representative Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois who was censured recently by the Republican Party for participating in the committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, criticized House Republicans for attacking Mr. Biden, tweeting that it “feeds into Putin’s narrative.”Understand Russia’s Attack on UkraineCard 1 of 7What is at the root of this invasion? 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      Defeat Trump, Now More Than Ever

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      The democratic nations of the world are in a global struggle against authoritarianism. That struggle has international fronts — starting with the need to confront, repel and weaken Vladimir Putin.But that struggle also has domestic fronts — the need to defeat the mini-Putins now found across the Western democracies. These are the demagogues who lie with Putinesque brazenness, who shred democratic institutions with Putinesque bravado, who strut the world’s stage with Putin’s amoral schoolboy machismo while pretending to represent all that is traditional and holy.In the United States that, of course, is Donald Trump. This moment of heightened danger and crisis makes it even clearer that the No. 1 domestic priority for all Americans who care about democracy is to make sure Trump never sees the inside of the Oval Office ever again. As democracy is threatened from abroad it can’t also be cannibalized from within.Thinking has to be crystal clear. What are the crucial battlegrounds in the struggle against Trump? He won the White House by winning Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin with strong support from white voters without a college degree. Joe Biden ousted Trump by winning back those states and carrying the new swing states, Arizona and Georgia.So for the next three years Democrats need to wake up with one overriding political thought: What are we doing to appeal to all working-class voters in those five states? Are we doing anything today that might alienate these voters?Are the Democrats winning the contest for these voters right now? No.At the start of 2021 Democrats had a nine-point advantage when you asked voters to name their party preference. By the end of 2021 Republicans had a five-point advantage. Among swing voters, things are particularly grim. A February 2022 Economist/YouGov survey found that a pathetic 30 percent of independents approve of Biden’s job performance. Working-class voters are turning against Biden. According to a January Pew survey, 54 percent of Americans with graduate degrees approved of Biden’s performance, but only 37 percent of those without any college experience did.Are Democrats thinking clearly about how to win those voters? No.This week two veteran Democratic strategists, William A. Galston and Elaine Kamarck, issued a report for the Progressive Policy Institute arguing that Democrats need to get over at least three delusions.The first Democratic myth is, “People of color think and act alike.” In fact, there have been differences between Hispanics and Black Americans on issues like the economy, foreign policy and policing. Meanwhile working-class people have been moving toward the G.O.P. across racial lines.“Today, the Democrats’ working-class problem isn’t limited to white workers,” the veteran Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg wrote in The American Prospect. “The party is also losing support from working-class Blacks and Hispanics.”The second Democratic myth is, “Economics trumps culture.” This is the idea that if Democrats can shower working- and middle-class voters with material benefits then that will overwhelm any differences they may have with them on religious, social and cultural issues — on guns, crime and immigration, etc. This crude economic determinism has been rebutted by history time and time again.The third myth is, “A progressive ascendancy is emerging.” The fact is that only 7 percent of the electorate considers itself “very liberal.” I would have thought the Biden economic agenda, which basically consists of handing money to the people who need it most, would be astoundingly popular. It’s popular, but not that popular. I would have thought Americans would scream bloody murder when the expansion of the existing child tax credit expired. They haven’t. Distrust in government is still astoundingly high, undercutting the progressive project at every turn.What do Democrats need to do now? Well, one thing they are really good at. Over the past few years a wide range of thinkers — across the political spectrum — have congregated around a neo-Hamiltonian agenda that stands for the idea that we need to build more things — roads, houses, colleges, green technologies and ports. Democrats need to hammer home this Builders agenda, which would provide good-paying jobs and renew American dynamism.But Democrats also have to do something they’re really bad at: Craft a cultural narrative around the theme of social order. The Democrats have been blamed for fringe ideas like “defund the police” and a zeal for “critical race theory” because the party doesn’t have its own mainstream social and cultural narrative.With war in Europe, crime rising on our streets, disarray at the border, social unraveling in many of our broken communities, perceived ideological unmooring in our schools, moral decay everywhere, Democrats need to tell us which cultural and moral values they stand for that will hold this country together.The authoritarians tell a simple story about how to restore order — it comes from cultural homogeneity and the iron fist of the strongman. Democrats have a harder challenge — to show how order can be woven amid diversity, openness and the full flowering of individuals. But Democrats need to name the moral values and practices that will restore social order.It doesn’t matter how many nice programs you have; people won’t support you if they think your path is the path to chaos.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Emmanuel Macron cuenta sobre su reunión con Vladimir Putin

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      El líder francés relató su cara a cara con Vladimir Putin y desestimó el intercambio de cartas de Washington con Moscú, apostando a que su diplomacia podría dar frutos antes de las elecciones de abril.PARÍS — La semana pasada, en una mesa mucho más pequeña que la ovalada de más de 6 metros de largo en la que el presidente de Francia, Emmanuel Macron, se sentó frente al presidente de Rusia, Vladimir V. Putin, en Moscú, el mandatario francés reunió a algunos periodistas. Ahí dijo que la crisis en Ucrania le estaba ocupando “más de la mitad de mi vida, la mayor parte de mi tiempo” porque el mundo se encuentra “en un momento crítico” de la historia.Esta mesa estaba a unos diez kilómetros de altura, en el avión presidencial que la semana pasada llevó a Macron con prontitud a Moscú; a Kiev, la capital de Ucrania, y a Berlín, donde alertó de un daño “irreversible” si Rusia invadía Ucrania y señaló que era crucial “no aceptar la fatalidad”.Macron está convencido de que la crisis actual —marcada por el revanchismo de Rusia tras su aparente humillación por parte de Occidente— significa que la seguridad colectiva de Europa no se ha podido repensar desde el fin de la Guerra Fría. Parece que, al menos en eso, coincidieron Macron y Putin. El enorme desafío que se le presenta a Macron es determinar cómo podría suplirse, y convencer a los demás, entre ellos a Estados Unidos, sobre sus beneficios.Para el final de la semana pasada, el estancamiento con Rusia, que derivó en maniobras militares cerca de las fronteras de Ucrania, parecía más amenazante que nunca. Sin embargo, a solo ocho semanas de las elecciones presidenciales en Francia, Macron ha tomado la arriesgada apuesta de intentar convencer a Putin de que recurra al diálogo y de que los electores franceses estén más complacidos con su autoridad a nivel global que enfadados por su falta de atención.Si fracasa, no solo se arriesga a perder sus votos y su confianza, sino a dañar su prestigio y el de su país al ser visto en el extranjero como un líder que fue demasiado ambicioso.Consciente de esa percepción, se ha esmerado mucho en coordinar sus esfuerzos con los de otros dirigentes europeos, algunos de ellos escépticos, y con Joe Biden, el presidente de Estados Unidos. El viernes, en una conversación de 75 minutos entre los líderes de Occidente, se activó un frente unido para convencer a Rusia de “distender la crisis y optar por el camino del diálogo”, manifestó la Comisión Europea.Una imagen satelital que muestra el despliegue de viviendas y vehículos militares en Rechitsa, Bielorrusia.Maxar Technologies, vía ReutersCuando cayó el Muro de Berlín, Macron tenía 11 años y Biden, 46, por lo que tal vez es inevitable que haya ciertas divergencias de opinión. Macron no ve ninguna razón para que la estructura de la alianza que prevaleció sobre la Unión Soviética sea eterna.“El asunto no es la OTAN, sino cómo creamos una zona de seguridad”, dijo. “¿Cómo podemos vivir en paz en esta región?”. Macron insinuó que parte de su objetivo en Moscú había sido sugerirle a Putin que abandonara su obsesión por la OTAN —que Ucrania no debe unirse nunca a esta organización— y se concentrara en otro “esquema”. Mencionó que le había dicho al dirigente ruso que “el esquema que usted propone es falso”.Understand Russia’s Relationship With the WestThe tension between the regions is growing and Russian President Vladimir Putin is increasingly willing to take geopolitical risks and assert his demands.Competing for Influence: For months, the threat of confrontation has been growing in a stretch of Europe from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Threat of Invasion: As the Russian military builds its presence near Ukraine, Western nations are seeking to avert a worsening of the situation.Energy Politics: Europe is a huge customer of Russia’s fossil fuels. The rising tensions in Ukraine are driving fears of a midwinter cutoff.Migrant Crisis: As people gathered on the eastern border of the European Union, Russia’s uneasy alliance with Belarus triggered additional friction.Militarizing Society: With a “youth army” and initiatives promoting patriotism, the Russian government is pushing the idea that a fight might be coming.Macron advirtió que era necesario presentarse en el Kremlin y enfrentar al hombre que le ha puesto una pistola en la cabeza a Occidente con 130.000 soldados congregados en la frontera con Ucrania. Se ganaba tiempo al abrir otra ruta diplomática, más flexible que el intercambio de cartas entre Rusia y Estados Unidos, que en repetidas ocasiones Macron rechazó por considerarlas inútiles, y programar próximas reuniones. Los dos líderes se reunieron durante más de cinco horas el lunes pasado. Macron dijo que insistió tanto en “las garantías que podía darme sobre la situación en la frontera” que, en algún momento, Putin dijo que estaba siendo “torturado”.Putin, con la misma insistencia, atacó la expansión hacia el este de la OTAN desde 1997 y la agresión que esto implicaba.Marinos ucranianos en la región oriental de Donetsk el miércoles de la semana pasada.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesCuando le preguntaron acerca de esa mesa tan larga y ridiculizada, Macron dijo: “Bueno, para nada era algo fraternal”.El Kremlin no ha aceptado que Macron haya obtenido alguna concesión, pero dijo que su enfoque tenía “simientes de razón”, a diferencia del intento de diplomacia por parte del Reino Unido, el cual fue tachado por el ministro de Relaciones Exteriores, Serguéi Lavrov, de una conversación entre “sordos y mudos”.No se sabe bien cuál podría ser el nuevo esquema propuesto por Macron para la seguridad de Ucrania y de Europa. Pero, al parecer, de alguna manera ofrecería garantías inquebrantables a Ucrania de su soberanía e independencia en una forma en la que su ingreso a la OTAN quedara como un espejismo; al tiempo que Rusia permanecería satisfecha de que la seguridad de Ucrania no se hubiera reforzado a expensas de Moscú.En la práctica, Macron cree que es posible hacer un truco de prestidigitación que logre al mismo tiempo dos cosas: que los ucranianos permanezcan libres y seguros para mirar hacia Occidente para su futuro y que Putin siga pensando que ambos países forman un “espacio histórico y espiritual”, como lo llamó el líder ruso en una reflexión de 5000 palabras publicada el verano pasado sobre “la unidad histórica de los rusos y los ucranianos”.Se trata de una maniobra híbrida, pero que no es inusual en el presidente francés. A través de los años, Macron se ha dado a conocer como el mandatario de “al mismo tiempo” por sus constantes malabares de diferentes aristas de los asuntos —primero a favor de disminuir la dependencia de Francia en la energía nuclear, ahora a favor de aumentarla— y por su intrincada disección de los problemas que a veces deja a los analistas preguntándose qué es lo que él cree en realidad.Es incuestionable que cree apasionadamente en la Unión Europea y en el desarrollo de Europa como una potencia más independiente. Es un tema en el que nunca ha vacilado, y ahora parece pensar que ha llegado la hora de rendir cuentas/jugársela/arriesgarse por esa convicción.Al menos, con la reunión del canciller de Alemania, Olaf Scholz, con Putin en Moscú esta semana, Macron ha hecho que el papel de Europa cuente en esta crisis, junto con Estados Unidos. Eso es más de lo que se puede decir del Reino Unido.El presidente de Rusia, Vladimir V. Putin, durante una reunión con el presidente de Francia, Emmanuel Macron, en Moscú la semana pasada.Foto de consorcio por Thibault Camus“Europa, a través de sus principales Estados, ha regresado de una etapa de la que parecía haber sido marginada”, dijo Michel Duclos, exembajador de Francia, en un artículo publicado recientemente por el Institut Montaigne.Macron ha tenido que trabajar mucho para mantener alineados a los gobiernos europeos indecisos, sobre todo los que solían vivir bajo el yugo soviético, con sus esfuerzos diplomáticos. Puesto que ahora Francia tiene la presidencia rotatoria del Consejo de la Unión Europea, ha tratado de comunicarse con todos, lo cual es una de las razones por las que Ucrania le está consumiendo su tiempo.Sus horarios tendrán que cambiar de alguna manera las siguientes semanas. Macron todavía no anuncia su candidatura para ser reelegido como presidente, pero es casi seguro que tenga que hacerlo en el transcurso de las próximas semanas. La fecha límite es el 4 de marzo y la primera ronda de votaciones es el 10 de abril.Por ahora, Macron lidera las encuestas, que le dan alrededor del 25 por ciento de los votos, con tres candidatos de derecha que le siguen y los partidos de izquierda divididos muy por detrás. Entre los rivales a su derecha hay un apoyo importante a la imagen de caudillo de Putin y su denuncia de la “decadencia” occidental, por lo que un vínculo con el líder ruso también beneficia políticamente a Macron.Aunque es el favorito para ganar, la probabilidad de una alta tasa de abstención entre los franceses desilusionados con la política y el atractivo poderoso de la extrema derecha hacen que la reelección de Macron no sea segura. Si Putin ignora sus esfuerzos diplomáticos e invade Ucrania, las certezas desaparecerán.Partidarios de Éric Zemmourl, candidato presidencial de extrema derecha, en Lille, FranciaChristophe Petit Tesson/EPA vía ShutterstockÉric Zemmour, candidato de la extrema derecha, dijo el mes pasado que Putin “debe ser respetado”, y agregó que “los argumentos y demandas de Putin son completamente legítimos”. También dijo: “Creo que la OTAN es una organización que debió haber desaparecido en 1990”.Marine Le Pen, la perenne candidata nacionalista y antiinmigrante, dijo el año pasado que “Ucrania pertenece a la esfera de influencia de Rusia”.“Al intentar trastocar esta esfera de influencia”, agregó, “se crean tensiones y miedos, y se llega a la situación que estamos viendo hoy”. Le Pen se negó a firmar una declaración emitida el mes pasado por partidos de extrema derecha reunidos en Madrid porque criticaba a Putin.Sus posturas revelan el abismo que separa la admiración de la extrema derecha francesa por Putin de los esfuerzos de Macron. A la convicción del presidente francés de que Rusia necesita ser parte de una nueva arquitectura de seguridad europea se une la determinación de que Ucrania mantenga su soberanía.Aunque Macron haya provocado malestar por sus críticas a la OTAN, se ha mantenido firme en no ceder a las demandas de Putin.Al preguntarle cuándo se dedicaría a anunciar su candidatura, señaló: “En algún momento tendré que ponerme a pensar en ello. Nada se puede hacer con premura. Tiene que ser en el momento adecuado”.Si Macron no encuentra ese momento ideal, su diplomacia y sus ideas de una seguridad europea reinventada pueden quedar en nada. Lo que puede ser factible en un segundo periodo de cinco años al frente de Francia, seguramente no lo será antes del 24 de abril, la fecha de la segunda ronda de las elecciones.Roger Cohen es el jefe del buró de París del Times. Fue columnista del diario de 2009 a 2020. Ha trabajado para el Times durante más de 30 años y se ha desempeñado como corresponsal y editor en el extranjero. Criado en Sudáfrica y Gran Bretaña, es un estadounidense naturalizado. @NYTimesCohen More

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      Emmanuel Macron Recounts Face-Off With Vladimir Putin

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      The French leader recounted his face-off with Vladimir Putin and dismissed Washington’s exchange of letters with Moscow, gambling that his diplomacy could pay off before April elections.PARIS — Around a table much smaller than the 20-foot-long oval slab across which he confronted President Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow, President Emmanuel Macron gathered a few journalists this week to confide that the crisis in Ukraine was taking up “more than half my time, the bulk of my time” because the world stands “at a tipping point” of history.The table was some six miles up in the air, on the presidential plane that whisked Mr. Macron to Moscow, Kyiv and Berlin this week, where he warned of “irreversible” damage if Russia invaded Ukraine, and said it was imperative “not to surrender to fate.”Mr. Macron is convinced that the current crisis, marked by Russian revanchism after its perceived humiliation by the West, reflects a failure to rethink Europe’s collective security after the end of the Cold War. On that, at least, he and Mr. Putin seem to agree. The formidable task before the French president is to figure out what could possibly replace it, and convince others, including the United States, of its virtues.By the end of the week, the standoff with Russia, which conducted military exercises all around Ukraine’s borders, looked as menacing as ever. Yet just nine weeks from a presidential election, Mr. Macron has made the risky bet that he can coax Mr. Putin toward dialogue and that French voters will be more taken with his global stature than alienated by his inattention.If he fails, he risks not only losing their votes and their confidence, but also damaging his prestige and that of his country by being seen abroad as an overreaching leader.Wary of that perception, he has taken great pains to coordinate his efforts with other European leaders, some of them skeptical, and with President Biden. A 75-minute conversation on Friday among Western leaders displayed a united front behind attempts to persuade Russia “to de-escalate the crisis and choose the path of dialogue,” the European Commission said.A satellite image showing the deployment of military housing and vehicles in Rechitsa, Belarus.Maxar Technologies, via ReutersMr. Macron was 11 when the Berlin Wall came down. Mr. Biden was 46. Some divergence of view is probably inevitable. Mr. Macron sees no reason that the structure of the alliance that prevailed over the Soviet Union should be eternal.“The question is not NATO, but how do we create an area of security,” he said. “How do we live in peace in this region?” Part of his goal in Moscow, he suggested, had been to prod Mr. Putin away from a NATO obsession — that Ukraine should never join the alliance — toward another “framework.” He said he had told the Russian leader “the framework you propose is false.”To turn up at the Kremlin, facing the man who has put a gun to the head of the West with 130,000 troops massed on the Ukrainian border, was necessary, Mr. Macron argued. Opening another diplomatic avenue, more flexible than the exchange of letters between Russia and the United States that Mr. Macron repeatedly dismissed as useless, gained time by locking in meetings in the coming weeks. The two leaders are expected to speak again on Saturday.Understand Russia’s Relationship With the WestThe tension between the regions is growing and Russian President Vladimir Putin is increasingly willing to take geopolitical risks and assert his demands.Competing for Influence: For months, the threat of confrontation has been growing in a stretch of Europe from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Threat of Invasion: As the Russian military builds its presence near Ukraine, Western nations are seeking to avert a worsening of the situation.Energy Politics: Europe is a huge customer of Russia’s fossil fuels. The rising tensions in Ukraine are driving fears of a midwinter cutoff.Migrant Crisis: As people gathered on the eastern border of the European Union, Russia’s uneasy alliance with Belarus triggered additional friction.Militarizing Society: With a “youth army” and initiatives promoting patriotism, the Russian government is pushing the idea that a fight might be coming.Over more than five hours on Monday, the two leaders confronted each other. Mr. Macron said he hammered on “the guarantees he could give me on the situation at the border” to such a degree that Mr. Putin at one point said he was being “tortured.”Mr. Putin, with equal insistence, attacked NATO’s expansion east since 1997 and the aggression this constituted.Ukrainian marines on Wednesday in the eastern Donetsk region.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesAsked about the much mocked long table, Mr. Macron said, “Well, it was hardly intimate.”The Kremlin has disputed that Mr. Macron won any concessions, but said there were “seeds of reason” in his approach, in contrast to attempted British diplomacy, which was dismissed by the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, as a conversation between “the mute and the deaf.”What Mr. Macron’s new framework might be for Ukraine’s security and Europe’s is unclear. But it appears that it would somehow offer Ukraine ironclad guarantees of its sovereignty and independence in ways that left NATO membership as a mirage, as it simultaneously satisfied Russia that Ukrainian security had not been strengthened at the expense of Moscow’s.In effect, Mr. Macron believes that some sleight of hand is conceivable that would at once leave Ukrainians free and secure to look West for their future, and Mr. Putin free to continue thinking the two countries form one “historical and spiritual space,” as the Russian leader put it in a 5,000-word disquisition on “the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” published last summer.This is a hybrid concept, but not atypical of its proponent. Over the years, Mr. Macron has become known as the “at the same time” president for his constant juggling of different sides of questions — first in favor of reducing France’s reliance on nuclear power, now in favor of increasing it — and for his intricate dissection of issues that sometimes leaves observers wondering what he really believes.That he believes passionately in the European Union, and the development of Europe as a more independent power, is unquestionable. It is one issue on which he has never wavered, and now he seems to think the hour of reckoning for that conviction has come.If nothing else, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany meeting with Mr. Putin in Moscow next week, Mr. Macron has made Europe count in this crisis, alongside the United States. That is more than can be said for Britain.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Monday during a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron of France in Moscow.Pool photo by Thibault Camus“Through its major states, Europe has returned to a stage from which it seemed to have been marginalized,” Michel Duclos, a former French ambassador, commented in a paper published this week by the Institut Montaigne.Mr. Macron has had to work hard to keep doubtful European states, particularly those that once lived under the Soviet yoke, aligned with his diplomatic efforts. With France currently holding the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, he has tried to reach out to everyone — one reason his days are consumed by Ukraine.His schedule will have to shift somewhat in the coming weeks. Mr. Macron has not yet declared his candidacy for re-election as president, but will almost certainly need to do so in the next couple of weeks. The deadline is March 4, and the first round of voting April 10.For now, Mr. Macron leads in polls, which give him about 25 percent of the vote, with three right-wing candidates trailing him and splintered left-wing parties far behind. Among the rivals to his right there is significant support for Mr. Putin’s strongman image and his denunciation of Western “decadence,” so engagement with the Russian leader also serves Mr. Macron politically.Although he is the favorite to win, the likelihood of a high abstention rate among French people disillusioned with politics and the strong appeal of the far right make Mr. Macron’s re-election anything but certain. If Mr. Putin ignores his diplomacy and does invade Ukraine, all bets will be off.Supporters of the far-right presidential candidate Éric Zemmour last week in Lille, France.Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA, via ShutterstockÉric Zemmour, the far-right insurgent in this election, said last month that Mr. Putin “needs to be respected,” adding that “Putin’s claims and demands are completely legitimate.” He also said, “I think NATO is an organization that should have disappeared in 1990.”Marine Le Pen, the perennial nationalist and anti-immigrant candidate, said last year that “Ukraine belongs to Russia’s sphere of influence.”“By trying to violate this sphere of influence,” she added, “tensions and fears are created, and the situation we are witnessing today is reached.” Ms. Le Pen refused to sign a statement issued last month by far-right parties gathered in Madrid because it was critical of Mr. Putin.Their stances demonstrate the gulf that separates far-right French admiration of Mr. Putin from Mr. Macron’s engagement. The French president’s conviction that Russia needs to be part of a new European security architecture is combined with resolve that Ukraine maintain its sovereignty.If Mr. Macron has caused unease through his criticism of NATO, he has held the line on not ceding to the Russian leader’s demands.Asked when he would turn his attention to declaring his candidacy, Mr. Macron said: “I am going to have to think about it at some point. You can’t do over hasty things. You need the right moment.”If he does not find that sweet spot, Mr. Macron’s diplomacy, and his ideas of reinvented European security, may come to nothing. What may be doable in a second five-year term leading France will certainly not be doable by April 24, the date of the second round of the election. More

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      Germany’s ‘Invisible’ Chancellor Heads to Washington Amid Fierce Criticism

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      Olaf Scholz will try to repair Germany’s credibility in the Ukraine crisis when he meets President Biden on Monday. Next on his agenda: Kyiv and Moscow.BERLIN — One headline asked, “Where is Olaf Scholz?” A popular magazine mocked the German chancellor’s “art of disappearance.” And his ambassador in Washington wrote home that Germany was increasingly seen as an unreliable ally in a leaked memo that was all the buzz this past week and began with the words: “Berlin, we have a problem.”With the threat of war hanging over Europe and rising tensions in the standoff with Russia over Ukraine, Mr. Scholz is headed to Washington on Monday for his first meeting with President Biden since taking over as chancellor in December. Foremost on his agenda: Show the world that Berlin is committed to the Western alliance — and, well, show his face.Less than two months after taking over from Angela Merkel, his towering and long-serving predecessor, Mr. Scholz is drawing sharp criticism at home and abroad for his lack of leadership in one of the most serious security crises in Europe since the end of the Cold War.His Social Democrat-led government, an untested three-way coalition with the Greens and Free Democrats, has refused to send arms to Ukraine, most recently offering 5,000 helmets instead. And it has been cagey about the type of sanctions that could be imposed in the event of a Russian invasion.As for the chancellor, he has made himself conspicuously scarce in recent weeks — so scarce that the newsmagazine Der Spiegel described him as “nearly invisible, inaudible.”While President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy have been busy calling President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mr. Scholz has so far neither picked up the phone to Moscow nor visited. He has not gone to Kyiv, Ukraine, yet, either, and his visit to Washington, some note, took almost two months to organize.Ukrainian soldiers on Saturday on the front line in eastern Ukraine. While the United States and other NATO countries rushed military aid to Ukraine, Germany offered 5,000 helmets.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesLast week, Emily Haber, Germany’s ambassador to the United States, sent a memo to Berlin, warning of “immense” damage to Germany’s reputation. It was not just the news media but many in the U.S. Congress who questioned Germany’s reliability, she reported. In the view of many Republicans, she wrote, Berlin is “in bed with Putin” in order to keep the gas flowing.It has not helped that since then, Gerhard Schröder, a former German chancellor from Mr. Scholz’s Social Democrats, accused Ukraine of “saber rattling” and just on Friday announced that he would join the board of Gazprom, Russia’s most prominent energy company.“Scholz’s central mission for his Washington visit has to be restoring German credibility,” said Thorsten Benner, a founder and the director of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin.“It’s not how Mr. Scholz envisaged his first U.S. trip as chancellor,” Mr. Benner added. “But international security was never near the top of his agenda.”Mr. Scholz, 63, has been a familiar figure in German politics for more than two decades. He was general secretary of his party and mayor of the northern port city of Hamburg before serving in two governments led by Ms. Merkel’s conservatives, most recently as her finance minister.A labor lawyer and lifelong Social Democrat, Mr. Scholz narrowly won the election last fall on a platform promising workers “respect” and a higher minimum wage, while nudging Germany on a path to a carbon-neutral future.Foreign policy barely featured in his election campaign, but it has come to dominate the first weeks of the new administration. Rarely has a German leader come into office with so many burning crises. As soon as Mr. Scholz took over from Ms. Merkel in early December, he had to deal not just with a resurgent pandemic but with a Russian president mobilizing troops on Ukraine’s borders.Russian infantry vehicles during drills in January in the Rostov region of Russia. The standoff with Russia over Ukraine has proved particularly vexing for Mr. Scholz.Sergey Pivovarov/Reuters“It wasn’t the plan,” said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, the vice president of the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund. “This is a government that has huddled around an ambitious plan of industrial transformation, but the reality of a crisis-ridden world has interfered with their plans.”Of all of the crises, the standoff with Russia has proved particularly uncomfortable for Mr. Scholz. His Social Democrats have traditionally favored a policy of working with Moscow. During the Cold War, Chancellor Willy Brandt engineered “Ostpolitik,” a policy of rapprochement with Russia.The last Social Democratic chancellor, Mr. Schröder, is not just a close friend of Mr. Putin’s, he has also been on the payroll of various Russian energy companies since 2005, notably Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, the two gas pipelines connecting Russia directly with Germany under the Baltic Sea.It was not until last week, after Mr. Schröder’s comments about Ukraine, that Mr. Scholz felt compelled to publicly distance himself from the former chancellor.“There is only one chancellor, and that is me,” he told the public broadcaster ZDF.His party’s divisions over Russia are one way to explain why Mr. Scholz has shrunk away from taking a bolder lead in the standoff with Russia, prompting some to lament the loss of leadership of his conservative predecessor.Mr. Scholz won the election last year primarily by convincing voters that he would be very much like Ms. Merkel. Terse, well briefed and abstaining from any gesture of triumph, he not only learned to sound like the former chancellor, he even emulated her body language, holding his hands together in her signature diamond shape.But now that he is running the country, that is no longer enough. German voters are hungry for Mr. Scholz to reveal himself and increasingly impatient to learn who he is and what he actually stands for.The receiving station for the $10 billion Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which connects Russia directly with Germany. If Russia invades Ukraine, Mr. Scholz will be under enormous pressure to close it down. Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesAs the current crisis unfolds, Mr. Scholz’s imitation of Ms. Merkel is also less and less convincing. She was understated and studious, and often kept her work behind the scenes, but she was not invisible.In the spring of 2014, after Mr. Putin invaded Crimea, Ms. Merkel was on the phone to him almost every day. It was Berlin that united reluctant European neighbors behind costly sanctions and persuaded President Barack Obama, distracted by domestic affairs, to focus on a faraway conflict.At that point, of course, Ms. Merkel had already been chancellor for nine years and knew all of the protagonists well.“The crisis came very soon for Scholz,” said Christoph Heusgen, a veteran diplomat and Ms. Merkel’s foreign policy adviser during the last Ukraine crisis.Mr. Scholz’s advisers have been taken aback by the level of criticism, arguing that Mr. Scholz was merely doing what Ms. Merkel had so often done: Make yourself scarce and keep people guessing while engaging in quiet diplomacy until you have a result.When Mr. Scholz has spoken up on the current crisis — referring to the Russia-owned gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 as a “private-sector project” before pivoting to saying that “everything” was on the table — he has conspicuously recycled language that Ms. Merkel used before.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Deauville, France, in June 2014. In the spring of 2014, after Mr. Putin first invaded Ukraine, Ms. Merkel was on the phone to him almost every day.Sasha Mordovets/Getty ImagesBut given the escalation in the current crisis, that language is long outdated, analysts say.“He’s overlearned the Merkel style,” Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff of the German Marshall Fund said. “He’s Merkel-plus, and that doesn’t work in a crisis.”After facing mounting criticism from Kyiv and other Eastern European capitals, Mr. Scholz’s leadership is increasingly being questioned at home, too.In a recent Infratest Dimap poll, Mr. Scholz’s personal approval rating plummeted by 17 percentage points, to 43 percent from 60 percent in early January, the sharpest decline for a chancellor in postwar history, the firm says. Support for his Social Democrats fell to 22 percent, lagging the conservatives for the first time since last year’s surprise election victory.Mr. Scholz’s team announced that after returning from Washington, the chancellor will pivot to a full schedule that he hopes will shift German diplomacy into high gear. Following his meeting with Mr. Biden, he will meet with Mr. Macron; the Polish prime minister, Andrzej Duda; and the three leaders of the Baltic States. The week after, he will travel to Kyiv and Moscow, in that order.Senior diplomats say it is high time for such a pivot, starting with Monday’s visit to the White House.Mr. Scholz has a seeming center-left ally in Mr. Biden, who has so far refrained from publicly criticizing Berlin. Not since President Bill Clinton’s second term have both the White House and the German chancellery been in the hands of center-left leaders, and for all of the wavering on the German side, the two administrations have been in close contact throughout.Mr Scholz, right, listening to President Biden, left, at the start of the virtual Summit for Democracy in December. Mr. Biden has so far held off on publicly criticizing Berlin.Michele TantussiBut patience is running thin, and Mr. Scholz will have to bring something to the table.“There has to be a visible sign of commitment to the alliance,” Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff said. “That’s what other allies are doing: The Spanish, the Baltic countries, the Poles, the Brits — everyone has offered something to strengthen deterrence on the eastern flank.”German lawmakers have started preliminary conversations about beefing up their troop presence in Lithuania, officials say. Other options include more naval patrols in the Baltic Sea and more air patrols in Bulgaria and Romania.As important as any material commitment may be the words Mr. Scholz uses — or does not use — to publicly communicate that commitment.“Maybe for the first time he could mention Nord Stream 2 by name when talking about possible sanctions,” Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff said. “He needs to make a clear statement that Germany gets the situation and will stand with its allies in a language that appeals to people in the U.S. and ideally not in his usual flat language,” he added. More