James Johnson is co-founder of JL Partners. He was the Senior Opinion Research and Strategy Adviser to Theresa May as Prime Minister, 2016-2019.
“He was able to do the whole speech without falling asleep”. That was Johnny’s verdict on Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech, a fifty-eight-year-old warehouse worker in Missouri who voted for him in 2020.
Faint praise is still praise. Republicans had set the bar so low for the president, briefing that he might not even make it through the sixty-minute occasion, that Johnny’s judgement was a win for Joe Biden. Not unreasonably – considering Biden had mixed up the president of Egypt with the president of Mexico just a few short weeks ago during a live address – viewers, including myself, were braced for a major gaffe. It didn’t come.
In fact, for the first twenty minutes of the address, which takes place each year to both the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court justices, and other invited dignitaries, it was the Republican Speaker Mike Johnson who looked weakest. As Biden made the case for a Ukraine win against Russia and more American financial support, Johnson nodded and quietly clapped.
But he and his own members are holding up a bill that funds Ukraine. When Biden praised NATO, Johnson clapped. It was easy to imagine him doing the same for the total opposite position if Donald Trump, now his party’s presumptive nominee for the presidential election, was making it. But despite demonstrating his support for Ukraine and NATO, Johnson would not clap at Biden’s condemnation of the actions of January 6th. The fact he cannot speak to the new face of much of the Republican party in Congress.
Biden, meanwhile, was not looking for unity. This was an angry, passionate, highly political speech, a different tenor to the usual State of the Union. He took on his “predecessor” thirteen times, the speech text was littered with exclamation marks, and he encouraged chants of “four more years” in the chamber. At one point – in a genuinely sensational moment – he stared down the Supreme Court justices in the chamber. He told them that women had “electoral and political power” that they should heed in their decisions on abortion.
At points it was Trumpian. He castigated the media. He shouted and played a game of call and response with his lawmakers. He loudly declared that Laken Riley, a woman murdered by an illegal alien, was killed by “an illegal”. He also put the spotlight on himself, presenting himself as the man standing in the way of a Republican assault on rights and freedoms.
The fact is that such traits are why Biden beat Trump in the first place. Straight-talking and strength are the public’s order of the day for their politicians, whether in the UK or the U.S. Whether Biden squaring up to a voter on the campaign trail (and saying he’d take him on physically outside), or Biden’s famous “will you shut up man?” at the first presidential debate, voters saw a flash of authenticity in Biden that they never saw from Hillary Clinton.
There were certainly some problems. Slurring gave away the President’s age at points. The section on the border – the biggest issue to the American voter – was by far his weakest, and he failed to make proper hay with the fact that Republicans refused to back a border compromise at Trump’s bidding. His pledge in the speech on Israel, providing a sea corridor for Gaza aid, will be welcomed by the international community its i. But its intention was political as well as humanitarian. He is hoping to shore up the votes of those who have abandoned him over the issue, and it is unlikely to move the dial.
Nor were all the voters convinced. In our poll of independents after the speech, some still had deep concerns about the President’s health. A 44-year-old home health aide from Massachusetts: “I feel he is old and should go to a nursing home”. A 45-year-old social worker from Ohio who voted for Biden: “The man is much slower than he was a year ago. It does worry me”. A female property manager from Illinois: “I don’t think it proved he is fit”.
But this was a good speech for Joe Biden. There were more positive comments than negative, and four in ten of our independent voters said he did better than expected. Jodie, a 27-year-old computer programmer from North Carolina, perhaps put it best: “Joe Biden did better than I expected because I’m not really a political person but I have heard bad things about him. So to hear him talk good in the speech has made me believe he’s doing better”. The White House will take that.
From a political perspective, Biden’s message was probably the best-calibrated position he could take. He is leaning into his age, making a virtue of it, crafting himself as the ultimate emblem of the American story. In the finishing section, he made an impressive argument, again putting himself at the heart of the narrative:
In my career, I’ve been told I’m too young and I’m too old. Whether young or old, I’ve always known what endures. Our North Star.
The very idea of America, is 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.
My fellow Americans the issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are it’s how old our ideas are. Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are among the oldest of ideas.
But you can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back. To lead America, the land of possibilities, you need a vision for the future of what America can and should be.
This was a Biden unapologetic about his advanced years, a President still trying to own the future. He is contrasting his often-fuddy style but clear morals with that of his opponent. By doing so he put himself a little more into the game than he was before.
Like the situation for the Tories in the UK, a large chunk of Biden’s support has flowed to people saying they do not know how they would currently vote. His base is also jaded. This speech will not be enough to win them all back, but it is plausible that more moments like this might open a path for those voters to return.
There are eight months to go. Most of the fundamentals still look better for Trump than Biden. But the President made himself interesting again last Thursday. No one should get caught up in one speech, but there is no doubt it was an important moment. Do not count him out just yet.
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Author: James Johnson
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