It was barely 10 months ago that President Joe Biden walked into a similar setting in the House chamber — with far fewer guests though far more masks — to declare that the nation was “ready for takeoff.”
“America is on the move again,” Biden said marking the eve of his 100th day in office, “turning peril into possibility, crisis to opportunity, setbacks into strength.”
Peril, crises and setbacks have dominated the ensuing months — alongside frustration, anger, drift and even dread. They converged to create the chaotic forces that surrounded Biden’s first official State of the Union address.
Biden’s prescription Tuesday night was to go smaller — not so much in terms of rhetoric, but in terms of achievable goals. Bold proposals for trillions in new spending were replaced by new inflation-controlling proposals, somewhat vague goals included in a “unity agenda for the nation” plus the promise that measures already passed will deliver bigger results.
On the major world crisis of the moment, Biden sought to channel the measure of unity on the side of Ukraine into something bigger. He drew bipartisan applause as he outlined new steps aimed at isolating Russian President Vladimir Putin and those around him.
“American diplomacy matters,” the president said. “Putin was wrong. We are ready.”
It was a speech crafted for a particular perilous moment, mindful of the challenges the nation is facing, and of the possible if not inevitable political blowback against the party in power. Even as Putin’s forces advance on Kiev, the president warned that the current conflict in Ukraine will incur “costs around the world” — including soaring gas prices.
“I know the news about what’s happening can seem alarming to all Americans,” Biden said. “But I want you to know, we’re going to be OK. We’re going to be OK.”
The president seemed to answer questions about whether Democrats should brag about their accomplishments with a definitive “yes.”
“The American Rescue Plan helped working people — and left no one behind,” Biden said, drawing broad applause from Democrats and a few jeers from Republicans in the House chamber. “And it worked. It created jobs. Lots of jobs.”
But Biden didn’t tout the “Build Back Better” plan that he spent much of last year trying in vain to get through Congress. Instead, he pleaded with Congress to pass smaller measures to promote innovation and competition, to raise taxes on corporate America and to control costs after what he acknowledged has been a “punishing” two years of the pandemic.
“My top priority is getting prices under control,” Biden said.
Notably, Biden rebuked some voices on the progressive left by declaring that “we should all agree” not to “defund the police.” He drew Republican applause for that, along with his vow to both “secure the border and fix the immigration system.”
The major planks of Biden’s “unity agenda” outlined Tuesday night are arguably as popular as they will be difficult to achieve. Ending the opioid crisis, supporting veterans, ending cancer “as we know it,” tackling mental health among children in particular — all are noble goals that aren’t the kinds of things that ever get completely done.
In a similar vein, while Biden and virtually all attending were maskless in a full House chamber on Tuesday, he ushered in what he cast as a new phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. After memorably saying the nation was close to “declaring our independence from a deadly virus” last July 4, the president is now outlining new strategies that “combat the virus as we do other diseases.”
“I know you’re tired, frustrated and exhausted,” he said. “But I also know this. Because of the progress we’ve made, because of your resilience and the tools that we have been provided by this Congress, tonight I can say we are moving forward safely, back to more normal routines.”
For their part, Republicans are leaving little mystery about how they plan to attack Biden and his fellow Democrats — or how much they look forward to the midterm elections that are just eight months away.
In the official GOP response, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds enumerated what she described as Biden failures, included pointed blame for the fact that many American children are not back to regular, learning in maskless environments.
“Instead of moving America forward, it feels like President Biden and his party have sent us back in time to the late ’70s and early ’80s,” Reynolds said in a speech delivered in Des Moines.
Politically, Biden limped into his State of the Union — carrying an approval rating of just 37% in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, with Republicans holding a 50%-40% edge on the question of who should control Congress and three in four Americans viewing the economy in a negative light.
In a moment that would seem to demand leadership, just 36% of Americans in the poll said they see him as a strong leader, while only 43% said he can be trusted in a crisis.
With Democrats still in control of Congress, plus the broad unity engendered by the crisis in Ukraine, Biden’s political woes seemed distant through much of Tuesday’s night speech. But that fact was implicit through much of what the president outlined — and chose not to address — at his first State of the Union.
Biden waited until the nearly the end of his speech to deliver the line most presidents employ — “the State of the Union is strong” — and then quickly offered a coda about why that is and what it means.
“Because you, the American people, are strong,” Biden continued. “We are stronger today than we were a year ago. And we will be stronger a year from now than we are today.”