WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is set to use his State of the Union address Thursday to promote his vision for a second term to a dispirited electorate who questions whether he’s up to the job and to warn that GOP front-runner Donald Trump would be a dangerous alternative.
Biden’s third such address from the House rostrum will be something of an on-the-job interview, as the nation’s oldest president tries to quell voter concerns about his age and job performance while sharpening the contrast with his all-but-certain 2024 rival.
The president hopes to showcase his accomplishments on infrastructure and manufacturing, as well as push for action on aid to Ukraine, tougher migration rules, restoring access to abortion, and lowering drug prices, among other issues. But as he does so, the 81-year-old president will be closely watched not just for his message but for whether he can deliver it with vigor and command.
The president will also try to make this State of the Union, with all its accompanying pomp, a more intimate moment. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden sees the speech as a “continuation of conversations” he has had with Americans as he travels the country. “It’s built on those conversations, that experience that he has,” she said Wednesday.
Biden spent last weekend working on the speech in the seclusion of the Camp David presidential retreat with his closest aides and presidential historian Jon Meacham. He was expected to keep fine-tuning it right into speech day, Jean-Pierre said.
The president will be speaking before a historically ineffective Congress. In the GOP-led House, Speaker Mike Johnson took power five months ago after the chaotic ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Legislators are still struggling to approve funding bills for the current year and have been deadlocked for months on foreign assistance bills to help Ukraine stave off Russia’s invasion and support Israel’s fight against Hamas.
The State of the Union address is a marquee night on the White House calendar, offering presidents a direct line to a captive audience of lawmakers and dignitaries in the House chamber and tens of millions of viewers at home. But even so, the night has lost some of its luster as viewership has declined.
“You always hear people say, ‘Oh, the speech has completely lost its relevance. Just send a PDF of it. It should be a video.’ That’s just such nonsense,” said Michael Waldman, a speechwriter in the Clinton White House. “… It may not be as big as Taylor Swift at the Super Bowl, but it’s a big audience for a political speech.”
Biden aides inside the White House and on his campaign are hoping for some fresh viral moments — like when he tussled last year with heckling Republicans and chided them for past efforts to cut Medicare and Social Security.
Johnson, eager to avoid a similar episode this year, in a private meeting on Wednesday urged Republicans to show “decorum” during the speech, according to a person familiar with his remarks to lawmakers.
Biden goes into the speech with work to do shoring up his standing. Just 38% of U.S. adults approve of how he is handling his job as president, while 61% disapprove, according to a recent survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
The same survey found that more than 6 in 10 (63%) say they’re not very or not at all confident in Biden’s mental capability to serve effectively as president. A similar but slightly smaller share (57%) say that Trump lacks the memory and acuity for the job.
The already intense scrutiny of Biden’s age was magnified when special counsel Robert Hur raised questions about the president’s mental acuity in his report last month on Biden’s handling of classified information.
Jim Messina, former President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, said Thursday’s speech offers Biden an important opportunity to address voter concerns.
“The more people see him doing his job, the better,” Messina said. “And the more people see him out there being the president of the United States, the better off we are.”
With Hur set to testify on Tuesday before lawmakers about his investigation, Messina said, Biden’s address could serve as a “prebuttal” to the special counsel’s appearance.
Biden is expected to paint an optimistic future for the country as the massive pieces of legislation he signed into law during his first two years in office are implemented. But he also was set to warn that the progress he sees at home and abroad is fragile — and particularly vulnerable if Trump returns to the White House.
Republicans, in contrast, are describing the current state of the union with dark, menacing terms — like “crisis” and “catastrophe” — that echo the dismal tones Trump sounds on the campaign trail.
“America is in decline, nothing he says tomorrow night is going to change that,” Johnson said Wednesday.
