A Unified Theory of Presidential Folly

I’ve been wrestling with how to put in context Joe Biden’s recent decision, amid bad polling numbers and his current disastrous involvements in Ukraine and Gaza, to go all out in a naval war against the determined Houthis of Yemen and the dhows—sailing vessels common in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea for millennia—that supply them.

It’s not a simple matter. But modern American history is full of presidents who made disastrous decisions when confronted with what they saw as challenges posed by ...