Let Biden’s efforts land with a dry, wheezing thud instead of the rancor he so badly needs in order to inject the energy he can’t personally deliver.
Tonight’s State of the Union address looks like a high-risk, low-upside event for Joe Biden. A supermajority of the public already thinks Biden is too old and frail and declining to do his job for another four years. Biden will seek to demonstrate that he’s vigorous, alert, and in command. But on his own, the most he can do is demonstrate that he can get through about an hour reading a prepared text, after spending most of a week resting and preparing (see Jim Geraghty on Biden’s slow schedule leading up to tonight). That’s not really the part of the job that makes Americans nervous about Biden’s capabilities. Even the sometimes tongue-tied George W. Bush and the rambling, bull-in-a-china-shop Donald Trump were regularly able to look and sound presidential, eloquent, and even-tempered for the duration of a speech to a joint session of Congress, a setting that drapes the president in his most imperial trappings.
So, a win for Biden is likely to be a small win. By contrast, the risk to Biden that he has some sort of malfunction at the podium is enormous. All it takes is one trailed-off sentence and vacant stare and that will be the viral moment that overwhelms an evening full of blather about drug prices and taxing billionaires. The thing that will make Democratic palms sweat from now until November is the fear of one incident that becomes the indelible memory of a Biden presidency that instantly becomes a past-tense proposition.
But Biden has one ace in the hole tonight that could give him a genuine win: congressional Republicans. Last year, in the most dramatic display of partisanship from the podium in the history of the State of the Union, he was able to bait them into shouting back at him and loudly denying his charge that they wanted to cut Social Security and Medicare. Not only did this box Republicans in on policy, it made Biden look as if he was calling the shots — and Biden was more than willing to sacrifice some dignity in exchange for a display of strength and vigor. Tonight, expect him to introduce into his remarks what Team Obama referred to as “stray voltage” — provocations and perhaps even deliberate misrepresentations aimed at goading Republicans into an unruly display. They should come prepared — and so much as possible, let Biden’s efforts land with a dry, wheezing thud instead of the rancor he so badly needs in order to inject the energy he can’t personally deliver.