On the menu today: I’m usually snarky about the importance of the annual State of the Union address, but this year, with 75 percent of registered voters thinking Joe Biden “is just too old to be an effective president,” the speech is more consequential than usual. The higher stakes mean that tonight, just about everyone on the left side of the aisle will be telling you that you witnessed the greatest oratory since wartime Winston Churchill. But Joe Biden’s lone public event this week reaffirms that what we see is what we get.
Biden’s Big Moment
Around 10 p.m. or so Eastern Standard Time, a massive effort will begin, attempting to persuade you that Joe Biden — age 81, approval rating 37.9 percent — just gave the best speech of his life. You will hear people insisting that this speech dispelled all doubts about his age or ability to perform his duties. You will hear people insisting that this speech ranks among the greatest State of the Union addresses of all time. You may hear some panelist on cable news claiming to have been moved to tears or declaring that this year’s address “saved democracy itself.”
How well Biden delivers the speech is almost immaterial. And as far as tasks go, delivering the State of the Union address is not one of the more difficult challenges for a president — enter the chamber, shake hands, read the teleprompter, deliver a speech where members of your party will leap up and clap like trained seals every time you pause, pay tribute to the notable guests in the gallery, shake hands, and take pictures on the way out. A debate is much harder, requiring thinking on your feet, and has a much higher risk of gaffes. (Neither Biden nor Donald Trump has participated in any debate since October 22, 2020.)
We know that this speech will include a laundry list of proposals, as all these addresses do, with only a handful of the proposals having any chance of becoming law. We know that Biden will probably not directly mention Trump, but we’ll get a lot of allusions to him — “the future of democracy,” references to January 6, the rule of law, etc. Large swaths of Biden’s speech will be indistinguishable from his likely acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 22.
The only way that the night can go terribly for Biden is if he trips on his way to the speaker’s rostrum, or if he loses his place on the teleprompter and printed pages of his speech and looks confused for a few moments.
And yet . . . Biden’s only public event so far this week has been announcing a new rule about credit-card fees. Watch the C-SPAN coverage here. Biden still walks gingerly, his mouth hangs open, he stares blankly as Rohit Chopra, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, describes the new rule. Biden’s voice is still soft, and he mumbles. He ad-libs, “I didn’t think as many people had any idea what a supply chain was.” He closes by boasting that he recognizes the importance of credit-card fees, and his staff doesn’t. “When I raised this issue a year or so ago with some of my team, they thought, ‘No one is going to care much about it.’ Well, they didn’t sit at my kitchen table when I was growing up. You care a whole lot when you’re being played for a sucker, no matter how much money you have.” (The subtext of almost every Biden anecdote is how he’s smarter and sharper than everyone else.)
Biden also briefly interacted with reporters, and insisted he was leading the last five polls, and that “you guys” don’t report on those polls.
Biden looks and sounds really old. Maybe they’ll load Biden up with double espressos and put on heavier makeup than usual. Biden’s still capable of delivering a speech from a teleprompter, but it’s doubtful he can deliver a performance that will dispel the notion that he’s too old for the job, and that he can continue until he’s 86.
It is also likely that the House Republican reality-show-contestant caucus — Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, the usual suspects — will make an unseemly spectacle of themselves, giving Democrats and the media something else to talk about. We yearn for the good old days of decorum, respect, and civility, demonstrated by South Carolina congressman Joe Wilson.*
This morning, White House chief of staff Jeff Zients told Politico, “You’re going to see a very energized president.” “This is a big moment. And this president rises to those big moments.”
If you ask the Biden team, he did a great job in his speech near Valley Forge, Pa. And he did a great job in his Oval Office address about Israel and Ukraine. And he did a great job at his speech at Independence Hall. And . . . well, you get the idea. Biden’s team is always telling us, or spinning us, that he did terrific.
And you notice, none of those speeches changed his job-approval numbers. Americans haven’t soured on Biden because they dislike his speeches; they’ve soured on him because they dislike the results.
Very few Americans who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 believed they were voting for a backlog of asylum seekers that is so egregious that their court dates are scheduled for 2033. Very few Americans who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 believed they were voting for the disappearance of affordable housing, car prices rising 30 to 38 percent, and the cost of child care outpacing the cost of mortgages. Biden boasted, “Putin knows that when I am president of the United States, his days of tyranny, and trying to intimidate the United States and those in Eastern Europe, are over,” and a week before the October 7 attacks, his national-security adviser boasted, “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.” Americans don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the deficit and debt, but the fact that we’re adding $1 trillion to our national debt every 100 days — when the economy is growing and tax revenues are near record highs — is mind-boggling.
Oh, and John Kerry, Biden’s “Special Presidential Envoy for Climate” is running around saying that if Russia reduced its carbon emissions, the world might feel better about its ongoing war-crime-laden invasion of Ukraine:
“If Russia wanted to show good faith, they could go out and announce what their reductions are going to be and make a greater effort to reduce emissions now,” Kerry said during a foreign press briefing on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., his last as the SPEC, as he departed from the position Wednesday to reportedly join President Biden’s presidential re-election campaign.
“Maybe that would open up the door for people to feel better about what Russia is choosing to do at this point in time,” he said.
Oh, yeah, Lurch, we’d all feel better about the mass graves in Bucha if Putin announced a greenhouse-gas plan. Idiot.
You don’t have to look far or be a crazy right-winger to conclude that the Biden administration is in over its head — slow-footed; in denial about worsening problems; convinced it’s stronger and more effective than it actually is; and more focused on managing the perceptions of problems than managing the consequences of problems. A majority of the American electorate is not madly in love with the prospect of another four years of Donald Trump, but it’s not hard to see why they are, at this moment, leaning in his direction over the status quo.
*Joe Wilson at least regretted his outburst. His wife posted a video saying she asked him afterward, “Who’s the nut who hollered out, ‘You lie’?” He was also formally reprimanded by the House. You notice you haven’t seen or heard Wilson repeat his performance.
ADDENDUM: The choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is likely to come down to about one out of every 20 voters . . . who often are the kinds of folks who tune out the world of politics until late autumn in presidential-election years.