As President Joe Biden’s Air Force One landed in Japan Wednesday for a carefully planned G7 summit, he had a world of problems on his mind:
Tensions with China. Russia’s war on Ukraine. The global economy’s 21st century problems. And the political and real world economic hell he had to rush home to: Washington’s run-amok juvenile sandbox politics that could force his world-leading economy to shamefully default itself, any day now. With the whole world watching.
Watching Biden in Japan, I recalled a bizarre, made-for-TV muck-up I witnessed the first time any U.S. president visited Japan. And I remembered the lesson it taught (that our leaders keep forgetting): Careful planning never guarantees that things will go according to plan.
