The Most Unusual State of the Union in Living Memory

Few leaders have so visibly enjoyed being president as Joe Biden. That might explain why he took so long getting down the aisle of the House chamber tonight, shaking hands and taking selfies. When he finally made it to the dais, he soaked up the applause and then grinned. “Good evening! If I were smart, I’d go home now,” he said.

The joke acknowledged the stakes of the evening’s State of the Union address. Conventional wisdom held that Biden had little to gain—the speeches rarely give presidents much boost—but much to lose if he seemed lost, old, or incoherent. But Biden delivered an energetic and pugnacious speech, one of the strongest of his career.

“In my career I’ve been told I’m too young and I’m too old,” Biden said to laughter. “Whether young or old, I’ve always known what endures, our north star: The very idea of America, that we are all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives. We’ve never fully lived up to that idea, but we’ve never walked away from it either. And I won’t walk away from it now.”

At times, the address was less a speech than a conversation. Republican members of Congress repeatedly heckled Biden, who was happy to mix it up with them. In one colloquy, the president attacked GOP tax policies as a handout to corporations and the wealthy, eliciting jeers. “You’re saying no. Look at the facts,” Biden smirked. “I know you know how to read.” Biden also engineered a predictable but successful trap by praising a bipartisan border-security bill that Republicans killed at Donald Trump’s behest. When Republicans booed, Biden broke out into a broad, Cheshire-cat smile. “Oh, you don’t like that bill?” he said. “I’ll be darned.”

The exchanges were a gift to Biden, whose aides had hinted that he wanted to talk back to hecklers, just as he did last year. They see these moments as opportunities for Biden to prove that he’s fast on his feet and not the senile shell some of his critics say he is. For the second year in a row, Republicans set a very low bar for Biden’s speech, and once again, he cleared it without much trouble.

Biden’s eagerness to engage did produce one awkward moment. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (wearing a MAGA hat against House rules) demanded that Biden acknowledge the recent murder of Laken Riley, a young Georgia woman allegedly killed by an unauthorized immigrant. Biden, who has tacked right on immigration, obliged. He held up a button with her name on it and referred to the man as “an illegal,” a term generally considered improper by Democrats.

Even without the repartee, this State of the Union was the most unusual in living memory, for a couple of reasons. First, Biden oversees what is statistically a strong economy, but voters’ dim views of it are perhaps the greatest threat to his reelection. He had to sell his economy without appearing oblivious to public concerns. Second, Biden is in a presidential race against a former president, the first time that’s ever happened in the address’s history. That gave him the awkward task of figuring out how to handle “his predecessor,” as he called Trump at least a dozen times.

“The state of our union is strong and getting stronger,” Biden said, putting his spin on the traditional formula. He tried to convince listeners that things were better than they’d heard, or felt. “The American people are writing the greatest comeback story never told, so let’s tell the story here,” he said. “I inherited an economy that was on the brink. Now our economy is literally the envy of the world! Fifteen million new jobs in just three years. That’s a record!”

Biden knows his rosy view is not commonly held. About two-thirds of respondents in a recent New York Times/Siena poll said the country was headed in the wrong direction. Eighty percent are dissatisfied with the status quo, according to Gallup. So Biden summarized some of his victories, recounting the country’s comeback from the COVID recession, boasting about growth in union jobs, and celebrating his moves to cut prescription-drug prices.

Biden also framed the presidential race less as a referendum on his record than as a choice between himself and  “my predecessor.” He warned about a return to the bad, not-so-old days of the Trump administration.

“My purpose tonight is to both wake up this Congress and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment,” Biden said. “Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault here at home as they are today.”

He castigated Trump and members of Congress for seeking to “bury the truth” about the January 6 insurrection and accused them of hollow patriotism. “You can’t love your country only when you win,” he said. He attacked Trump for anti-immigrant rhetoric, saying, “Unlike my predecessor, I know who we are as Americans.” He also assailed Trump for his criticism of NATO and friendliness toward Russian President Vladimir Putin. “My predecessor tells Putin, ‘Do whatever the hell you want,’” Biden said. “That’s a quote. The former president actually said that, bowing down to a Russian leader. That’s outrageous, it’s dangerous, and it’s unacceptable.”

Biden spoke at length about abortion rights, calling on Congress to pass a law protecting the right to in vitro fertilization and promising to reinstate Roe v. Wade. He noted Trump’s pride in the decision overturning it and quoted the majority opinion, which said that “women are not without electoral or political power.” Biden addressed the Supreme Court justices seated in the audience directly, saying, “You’re about to realize just how much you were right about that.”

By the end of the roughly hour-long speech, Biden seemed more animated than he had at the start. He closed by acknowledging widespread concerns about his age, then pivoting to yet another attack on Trump. “My fellow Americans, the issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are, it’s how old our ideas are,” he said. “Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are among the oldest of ideas. But you can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back.”

The test of whether he’s right will be whether it’s him or Trump addressing a joint session of Congress this time next year.