Over the past four decades, the importance of the State of the Union address has declined. This is not the fault of any one president; the advent of television transformed it from a moment of serious national policy to entertainment.
Joe Biden did nothing Thursday to change that. Ever since Woodrow Wilson revived the tradition of delivering direct messages to members of the House and Senate, presidents of the 20th and 21st centuries have used it to set the agenda for the year.
Biden used it to set his campaign agenda. He began his speech with a not-so-subtle allusion to the slave-owning, separatist South, Imperial Japan, fascist Italy, and political opposition that corresponded to Nazi Germany.
He may have been referring to the need to combat President Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. Still, the meaning is clear. The values held by those who support Donald Trump are un-American. Some people may find that unpleasant.
Mr. Biden appeared to say that his predecessor, Donald Trump, had put the country and the world at risk by refusing to stand up to Mr. Putin. “I’m not going to bow down,” he said after Trump supporters entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to stop Congress from counting electoral votes and deciding who their supporters are. The government once again condemned the actions of the protesters. That’s what the next U.S. president will do.
Biden has used this strategy before. By labeling President Trump’s MAGA movement as outside the democratic consensus, as he did before the 2022 midterm elections, President Trump will likely divide the country along lines favorable to his re-election. I guess he wants to.
After a lengthy debate on abortion that ended with a promise to restore the law to its Roe v. Wade-era status, Biden once again criticized President Trump for failing to take into account what he said was the most important duty of the president. denounced.
This is a passage from a campaign speech, not a speech to the nation about America’s future. The president’s most important duty, in the words of his constitutional oath of office, is to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
That’s a serious charge. Unfortunately, Biden cannot defend his record in this regard. He has repeatedly forgiven the debts of thousands of Americans who borrowed money to attend college but never paid it back, even though he was told by the U.S. Supreme Court that he could not do so.
The effort, similar to efforts by several Democratic governors across the country who are currently seeking forgiveness for people struggling with medical debt, has been described by some analysts as nothing more than an attempt to buy votes. There is.
He’s going to need them. There is no polling data to suggest that Trump is on track to win a majority of the popular vote in November, but polls in recent months have shown him leading in battleground states that will determine the outcome of the next election. It has been shown that
Recognizing that this was a political event, the Trump campaign flooded the inboxes of supporters and the media with what campaign technology calls “instant responses,” responding to Biden’s accusations. I replied.
Just as every success has a counterargument, so too does every accusation against Biden have an answer. The president touted the record number of new homes currently under construction, but did not mention that the country still faces a housing shortage. It’s not because there isn’t a market for them, but because the environmental and land-use regulatory systems that exist at the federal level and in many states make it difficult for developers to build new homes and new communities, and expensive for the middle class. This is because it is too much for me to handle.
Biden’s speech relied too heavily on attempted but not necessarily true renegotiations, such as forcing the wealthiest people and big corporations to “ultimately pay their fair share.” What he and many of his commentators hate to admit is that they are already doing it.
The latest statistics show that the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has increased the share of total tax revenue paid by these people. More than 40% of his total income tax revenue comes from the top 1% of earners. The bottom half gets paid very little.
In his speech, Biden embraced every kind of big government in existence, going so far as to support legislation that would essentially dictate to snack food companies how many chips they can put in a bag. At the very least, it’s excessive and ridiculous.
From inflation (the reason the average bag of potato chips may be lighter than it used to be) to immigration, Biden acknowledged that it was his administration’s policies that caused or exacerbated these problems. There wasn’t.
None of that excuses the repeated interruptions by some Republicans during Biden’s speech. Their intervention may have forced Biden to mention Laken Riley, a young woman who was recently wrongfully murdered in the United States, but he was clearly prepared for it. It was a glancing blow at best, but he replied, “We can fight over the border, or we can fix the border.”
Biden is right on that point. However, it is possible to fix borders without Congress taking action. The president can make things right on his own by simply reintroducing his predecessor’s policies that he had put on hold after he took office.
Predictions that Biden’s age would indicate turned out to be wrong. His language was powerful. He rarely stumbled. He continued his message, rarely deviating from the prepared text. But he also couldn’t reconcile what he said with the facts. At the beginning of his speech, he praised President Ronald Reagan for calling on former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to come to Berlin and “tear down this wall.” He did not mention how he was criticizing the matter.
No president in recent memory has been as belligerent toward the opposition as he was during his State of the Union address, as Biden called for support for his “unified agenda.” This was a campaign speech addressed to the remnants of the former Roosevelt administration, which is hoping that President Roosevelt will be re-elected in November.
Biden ended his speech by affirming his candidacy with the same enthusiasm with which he praised his country. This sums up what’s wrong with President Biden. For him, it’s not about us, it’s about him.
Peter Roff is a veteran Washington, D.C., commentator, former contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report, and former senior political writer at United Press International. He currently writes regularly for various publications and appears regularly on international television discussing US politics. You can reach him at RoffColumns AT GMAIL.com and follow him on Twitter @TheRoffDraft.
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