https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/01/washington-in-slumber/

Sleepy Washington is likely on the verge of being awakened by a major world crisis.

Washingtonians may not fully grasp the impression their city gives to foreign visitors these days. It is one of somnolence. Too many shops or restaurants are closed, temporarily or permanently; the traffic is light; the streets largely empty. As a suburbanite, I drive into Washington for meetings and find I never have to use a parking garage these days. Downtown is sufficiently deserted to make finding a parking meter easy. Thus, to foreign visitors, it often seems that the city is asleep and nothing important is happening right now.

They are right. What, after all, is happening on Capitol Hill? Nothing — or rather nothing but kabuki. Despite knowing what the outcome will be, the Democratic leadership forces votes that will be lost. Perhaps they are thinking this will be useful in November, but for the moment, it means that Congress is doing nothing of serious value.

And what is going on in the executive branch? On the border issues, nothing. On Covid, nothing: The president has said this is mostly a state issue, and anyway, most Americans have given up relying on so-called experts in the federal government. Americans can sign up now for three free masks, a pathetic measure of government action. The “energy in the Executive” of which Hamilton wrote consists nowadays of travel and speeches, and the only thing that gets this president energized is an opportunity to attack his domestic opponents.

On foreign policy, the president is waiting for Putin’s next move. This puts the United States in a position of reaction, issuing repeated warnings of a vague and general nature. Of real action, such as sending 10,000 troops to Poland or announcing a shipment of 2,000 anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, there is none. The only significant thing that happened in the foreign-policy world in the last week or two was the president’s disastrous press-conference error in saying that a small incursion into Ukraine by Putin would not be a very big deal. This was such an amazing mistake that the White House issued a correction in the nature of a retraction within one hour of Biden’s speech. But such errors give insight into the mind of the president, and this insight will have been profoundly unnerving to every American friend or ally anywhere in the world. Those who are dependent on Joe Biden for their security will have shivered last Wednesday evening. Think of it: This is the most dangerous, immediate national-security issue, and it was certain to come up at the press conference, yet the president was not only inarticulate but actually unable to state U.S. policy clearly.