Trump’s Fast Food vs. Biden’s Slow Cook – Two Recipes for Biden

By endorsing two peace plans—one for the Middle East and one for Ukraine—Biden can boost his re-election prospects.

By now, everybody knows about the first presidential debate of 2024, which took place on June 27th in Atlanta between President Biden and former President Trump, who is trying to get his old job back. Based on the polls afterward, Mr. Trump won the word feast. Many Democrat pundits are now alarmed about Mr. Biden’s one-night debacle. How would he redeem himself? This article offers two change-the-world recipes.

Mr. Trump was in his element: his voice was strong and commanding, he confidently fired up fact after fact, to prove his four years of administration were good and Biden’s bad. Listening to Mr. Trump was like your mind eating fast food – food for thought. Mr. Trump was also in his element: without qualms, he rattled off falsehood upon over-the-top falsehood. For example, he claimed Democrats wanted abortions “even after birth” – that would be infanticide illegal everywhere in the U.S. After a while, the fast food just tasted like junk food.

Mr. Biden offered a contrasting performance. His raspy voice fitted a deliberate but halting delivery, and many meaningful but long-winded thoughts simmered towards the viewers’ patience. The listening experience was like waiting for slow cooked food—all the good ingredients were in the pot, now let’s wait for the meal. The problem? The resulting meal was decent but not exceptional enough to overcome Mr. Trump’s circus.

Here are two never-sampled recipes that will spice up Mr Biden’s menu of policies. They relate to two hard-to-chew main courses dumped on Mr. Biden’s plate: the Israel-Palestinian Conflict (including the Israeli-Hamas War) and the Russo-Ukrainian War. Imagine Mr. Biden resolving these intractable issues that stymied all previous presidents, including Mr. Trump. The good thing is that Mr. Biden would not even need a resolution since the recipes may take longer than a few months between now and the September election: He just needs to endorse them.

The recipe for the Israel-Palestinian Conflict and Israeli-Hamas War is the PEIS Plan. The Palestinian-Egyptian-Israeli-Sinai (PEIS) plan proposes that Egypt sells part of the Sinai Peninsula to the Palestinians, the Palestinians sell the West Bank to Israel and use the remittance to pay for its Sinai purchase, which they will combine with the Gaza Strip to form a New Palestinian state, contiguous from sea to sea, 50% bigger than Greater Israel, and six times larger than the landlocked West Bank. The Israelis buy the West Bank and fulfill their yearning for Judea and Samaria. The book about the PEIS Plan was released last year just before the October 7 attacks; follow-up articles and discussions are now being hosted on the Times of Israel. It does not matter if one sees the PEIS Plan as realistic or not, because of TIANA – There Is A New Alternative.

Existing one-state and two-state solutions are tired and ragged after eight decades of trying. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result”, but that is exactly what Mr. Biden, already accused of senility, has been pushing to the Israelis and Palestinians who, in a rare moment of unanimity, said no to yet-another DOA two-state solution. The PEIS Plan offers fresh air, a new direction. It shows a path not taken that can lead to permanent peace, because it offers something dear to each of the three parties: To the Egyptians, prosperity and a windfall for its pharaonic ambitions; to the Palestinians, dignity and a viable country; and to the Israelis, security and Greater Israel. By endorsing the PEIS Plan as a starting point for the journey to peace, Mr. Biden will single-handedly change the tenor of the Middle East from retribution to hope. Since this three-state solution is so new and unexpected, the warring parties will likely pause the fighting to give room for everybody to study, discuss, probe, explore. If this pause leads to an interim ceasefire and then to a permanent peace agreement, some cartoonist in the future may as well draw Mr. Biden as a beard-flowing Moses leading, not the Israelites, but the Israelis, Palestinians, and Egyptians towards the Sinai as the symbol of peace. Biblical scholars believe Moses was around 80 years old at the time of his feat. Who wouldn’t want to vote for a contemporary “Moses”?

The recipe for the Russo-Ukrainian War is the CURD Plan. Not too many know about it yet. Its precursor was developed to resolve the limited conflict involving only the Crimean Peninsula and the separatist Donbas region; it was still on the drawing board when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The work pivoted into the CURD Plan. The book about the CURD Plan is currently in a pre-publication review, but one can read about its two Propositions, seventeen Points with subordinate Clauses online. The CURD Plan has two distinctions. First, by allowing both Ukraine and Russia to declare their own victory, the CURD Plan makes itself feasible as a basis for negotiation. Secondly, the CURD Plan is not only a plan to end the war but also a plan to prevent a future war. (On that record, the WWI Armistice failed.)

Once Mr. Biden endorses the comprehensive CURD Plan and proposes it to Ukraine and Russia for them to discuss, Mr. Trump’s “I will end the war in 24 hours” will look like the petulant talk of a child with a bonbon with no chocolate. The world needs a seasoned statesman at the helm of the number one superpower. Mr. Biden can be this statesman, but if only …

The beginning of this article compares Mr. Biden’s style as slow cook. It should be more like fine dining, where one is willing to wait for an extraordinary meal. So far, the substance is missing. His current plan is pouring billions here, billions there, and more billions into the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, the Israeli-Hamas War, and the Russo-Ukrainian War, with no end in sight. The PEIS Plan and the CURD Plan are the TIANAs that provide a sight of the ends. Once Mr. Biden endorses the Plans, the American taxpayers will thank him for his helmsmanship. And they vote.

ADDENDUM

Let’s consider this scenario. Mr. Biden is not made aware of the Plans because of his gatekeepers’ (in)competence, or rejects the Plans, or dithers to make a decision. Mr. Trump gets wind of the Plans since they are public for all to read and makes a run of them. Then, it will not matter if the Plans are realistic or not; Mr. Trump is a master of spinning the yarn. He now has a foreign platform to excite his troops, to talk to worldwide leaders, and to put enormous pressure on Mr. Biden, who, as the sitting president, has to do something, with the killings and destruction piling every day in Ukraine and Gaza Strip. If Mr. Biden then adopts the Plans or certain aspects of them, the world will be thankful that both candidates are going for peace. However, why vote for Mr. Biden, a perpetual follower, when one can vote for Mr. Trump, the real deal?

Let’s consider another scenario. For one reason or the other, both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump ignore the Plans in their campaigns. Then, each one of us, in all our ways of communication, has to ask them the question: “What’s your alternative?“