At the start of his speech Tuesday night, President Joe Biden is apt to declare that the state of the union is strong.
And by the time he’s done, he’ll have put together a case that he deserves a substantial share of the credit.
The 2024 presidential race looms large over Biden’s State of the Union address, even though he has not yet announced whether he is running for re-election. With a captive audience that traditionally gathers once a year, he’s not missing a chance to explain why voters should give him a second term.
Biden will use the speech to reach a broad audience that may have only a passing interest in politics and policy, and reassure his members that he has put in place plans that will reduce their daily commute and reduce their prescription drug costs. Will lower the bill, said House, a person close to White.
It will take some work: An NBC News poll last month found that only 31% believe Biden is a capable and effective president, while 71% say the country is on the wrong track.
His advisers hope Tuesday is a chance to turn the tide on the skeptics. The State of the Union audience has shrunk over the years amid growing political polarization and the breakdown of the news media. Yet viewership is huge: Last year, 38 million people watched Biden’s speech and 16 networks carried it live. This is more than three times the number of television viewers for the final game of the Astros-Phillies World Series.
Once the speech is over, Biden and his cabinet will travel around the country to amplify the message. The next day, Biden will travel to Madison, Wisconsin, to discuss his job creation plans, while Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Atlanta to talk about clean energy. All told, Biden, Harris and the cabinet will tour 20 states in a post-speech assault that seeks to capitalize on orders from the president sitting at the megaphone.
“This is the year and the message the president needs to set the story of his reign and campaign: what his presidency means for the public good and why they should lend him their support,” Martha Kumar, at Towson University said Emeritus Professor. and an expert in White House communications. “If he doesn’t do that, next year Ron DeSantis,” a likely Republican nominee, “and Donald Trump will have him defined by his failures as they see them.”
According to a White House official, Biden will send a message that the economy is in better shape than it was when he took over from Trump and that America’s foreign alliances are stronger.
Randy Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers and a Biden aide, said, “I can’t imagine him announcing in the State of the Union that he’s running for re-election.” “You’ll hear arguments for why at the State of the Union.”
Biden’s second State of the Union address promises to be a bit of a balancing act. Over the past two years, he’s veered between provoking Republicans and working to advance their policies. Just last week, he told an audience of Democratic activists that the GOP has become “disoriented.”
On Tuesday, the White House official said, he is likely to show a more bipartisan face, making the point that both parties can accomplish a lot if they work together. Biden is road-testing some of the themes he is likely to employ, including that America is on the ascendancy when it comes to economic and geopolitical influence – something both parties can appreciate .
“The speech is a good opportunity for the president to present his way,” said Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat. “It should have an optimistic and upbeat tone.”
Still, the prospect of grand bipartisan breakthroughs seems remote. The new speaker, who will sit behind Biden in the House chamber, will be Republican Kevin McCarthy — not Democrat Nancy Pelosi, who lost her leadership role when her party lost its majority in the midterm elections.
House Republicans have little incentive to work with Biden and burnish his record ahead of the 2024 election. Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, who is the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told a conference of conservative activists last August that the GOP-led investigation into the Biden administration “will help frame the 2024 race, when I hope and Looks like President Trump is going to run again, and we need to make sure he wins.
In the face of a divided Congress, a more realistic focus for the back half of Biden’s term would be to implement the trillion-dollar spending packages he has signed into law, according to some who have worked with him.
“Some of the most important work happening in the second half of the term is executing on those priorities,” said David Kamin, a former member of Biden’s National Economic Council. The chances of more ambitious bills passing a bipartisan vote “look bleak right now.”
It is not that Democratic interest groups are giving up. In the run-up to the speech, aides to the president have been meeting privately with White House staffers and urging him to use the platform to jump-start unfinished pieces of his agenda.
His hope is that the speech will build momentum behind various initiatives underway on Capitol Hill: proposals to stop police abuse, protect voting rights and provide pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Biden would only need to glance at the House gallery to be reminded of the agony of police violence. Among the guests will be the parents of Tyree Nichols, who died days after being beaten by police in Memphis, Tennessee.
“The president needs to recognize that shaping public opinion may now be more important than trying to be the most successful legislative mechanism,” said Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League and former mayor of New Orleans.
Morial continued, “This is not the time to just sit back and say, ‘I can’t do this or that because of Congress.’ “The people do not appoint a president to be an assistant member of Congress.”
Rev. Al Sharpton suggested that, for inspiration, Biden look to a national address given by former President Lyndon Johnson. This was not a State of the Union speech, but a civil rights speech Johnson gave in March 1965 after beating protesters attempting to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in the name of voting rights. “We shall overcome,” Johnson vowed in a speech inspiring the passage of the Voting Rights Act later that year.
“They need a Johnson moment and need to deal with the fact that we don’t choose the civil rights issues of our time, but these are the issues of our time and we need to stand up to them and deal with them,” said Sharpton, who spoke with Harris at Nichols’ funeral last week.
What the general public wants from the speech is a completely different question. For Biden, one of the troubling findings from the NBC poll is how many Americans doubt he is up to the job. Only 28% believe he is mentally and physically fit to be president – down from 33% the year before.
The oldest person ever to serve as president, Biden will be 86 by the end of the second term if he should run for re-election and win.
Jeff Schasol, a speechwriter for Bill Clinton’s White House, said, “More than any policy initiative he advocates or any particular line of rhetoric, the speech will be judged by how clear and forceful it sounds.” Speeches in 1999 and 2000. “His health and fitness and vigor are a matter of speech whether he likes it or not and it doesn’t matter what he says about anything else. If he falters, anyone will talk about the same.
“The good thing is that expectations are quite low in terms of the quality and flow of Biden’s speech. If he does indeed give a good, articulate, energetic address, it won’t make those questions go away about him being the oldest president in American history, but it will at least put those concerns to rest for a while. would be cool.