Behold, as I rise to write a wildly unpopular Corner post:
My reaction to Biden’s State of the Union address inevitably falls upon aesthetic lines. It is perhaps my cardinal flaw to analyze politics in the post–social media, “everything everywhere all at once” era as a primarily performative act whose core policy substance is kept far away from the grubby hands of hoi polloi and whose primary goal is therefore just “moving voters” around like pieces on a tabletop game board rather than accomplishing concrete achievements.
So, if you’re looking for a line-by-line refutation of Joe Biden’s various misrepresentations, demagogueries, and folderol, then you have come to the wrong place, my friend. In fact, I’m afraid you will find only evil here.
Forget for a moment about the “substance” of it. (Did you care about the substance, really? What is your delineated policy response to the fentanyl crisis other than “gee, this is awful?”) People react to an emotional vibe, and Biden, after carefully setting moderate expectations during the week, came and delivered a State of the Union that played as a folksy stump speech; Uncle Joe delivering a working-class colloquy. It was quite effective as a rhetorical ploy.
Biden played a losing economic and electoral-polling hand with the public as deftly as possible (with infuriatingly unwitting assistance from his audience, about which more below) by leaning into his retail political skills, 50 years of memorized blue-collar schtick, and the laughter and encouragement of the friendly half of the room (a half which was expected to be significantly smaller than it is, I might remind you). He began, noticeably, working them like a comedian, and on a purely aesthetic level (one which Trump bears an enormous amount of responsibility for normalizing with his radically casual approach to formal presidential utterances) it worked greatly to his benefit, making him seem in command of his brief in a way he has rarely seemed to be recently.
This of course brings me to my other reaction to the address, which was — and I wish to God this were not the case — “why won’t the backbench Republicans just shut up and let this moron finish his speech?”
The rules for how to handle hecklers during a late-night stand-up-comedy routine should not have to apply to a president of the United States delivering a State of the Union, regardless of how disingenuous or downright insulting that address might be. The story tonight was already destined to be “Joe Biden does surprisingly well,” but now it will also be “Joe Biden faces repeated heckles from masses of GOP congressmen during the State of the Union.”
Joe Wilson was a memorable one-man scandal back in 2009. Now, the House GOP caucus has a full platoon willing to randomly fire their pistols in the air during the middle of a joint session of Congress by the president. Many surely consider this to be an evolutionary improvement. The 2022 midterm results suggest that the American electorate writ large does not.