State of the Union speeches tend to have a soporific cadence. Presidents and their writers, feeling pressure to make their achievements seem historically epic, layer on portentous and faux-inspiring rhetoric. Ironically, this ends up making the addresses especially forgettable.
Joe Biden’s approach Tuesday was looser in many places, particularly during the first half of the evening. Take, for example , his amiably confrontational remarks about raising taxes on corporations and billionaires—a great impression of a regular person talking about politics:
Biden, at age 80, does not deliver either prepared text or ad-libs with the greatest precision. This text was, on the page, not particularly dynamic. It was his presence in the moment, rather—his own interest in what he was saying and how his audience was receiving it—that was notable. He worked the crowd; he injected the word “folks” everywhere he could; he got mad and fired up. In what was largely a departure from the norm, he also played to the Republicans in attendance, goading them into peeved responses that he could then meet with a confident camaraderie:
Given factors like structural polarization, media fragmentation, and the overwhelming primacy of gasoline prices, none of this probably “matters” much. It will probably not affect Biden’s approval ratings or ability to pass legislation in the House of Representatives.
But it made for a better speech. The presence of actual human energy in its early moments gave weight to the softer tone Biden took when he turned, in the second half of the night, to address matters of life and death—police brutality, foreign proxy war, and assault rifle massacres among them; you know, the modern-America subjects. This, in turn, contrasted with the patriotic verve of the evening’s quintessentially Bidenian conclusion, the Last True Idealist material that he takes such visible pleasure in delivering.
An arc, a shape, a structure—a real speech, by a real-seeming human! It might even be the kind of thing you remember, years from now. Biden is surely hoping it can carry him, at least, through 2024.
