Joe Biden delivered what may be his last State of the Union address — as well as arguably one of the most important speeches of his presidency, thanks to how much has been going wrong with his reelection campaign thus far — to Congress on Thursday night. The GOP’s official response came in the form of a kitchen talking-to from Alabama senator and rising Republican star Katie Britt. Below is a running roundup of how pundits and other commentators have reacted to the two speeches.
Intelligencer’s Ed Kilgore writes that the president seemed not at all grandfatherly — and very comfortable on offense against his once and future opponent:
He saved perhaps his cleverest gambit for near the end, mentioning his own age (very much the elephant in every room Biden enters this year) but identifying Trump as the dark side of his own generation:
“My lifetime has taught me to embrace freedom and democracy. A future based on the core values that have defined America. Honesty. Decency. Dignity. Equality. To respect everyone. To give everyone a fair shot. To give hate no safe harbor. Now some other people my age see a different story. An American story of resentment, revenge, and retribution. That’s not me.”
Biden’s delivery was fiery, a bit rushed, and he occasionally stumbled over his words, but it was anything but low-energy.
David Axelrod, the former senior Obama administration adviser who has been repeatedly critical of Biden’s reelection campaign thus far, praised the bread-and-butter section of the speech:
Many Americans are most focused on tangible issues facing their day-to-day lives. Issues like tax fairness; the cost of RX, food and housing; of raising and educating kids are front and center. My guess is this part of the @POTUS's speech landed with voters he needs to reach.
At The Atlantic, David A. Graham notes that Republicans set Biden up to succeed:
At times, the address was less a speech than a conversation. Republican members of Congress repeatedly heckled Biden, who was happy to mix it up with them. In one colloquy, the president attacked GOP tax policies as a handout to corporations and the wealthy, eliciting jeers. “You’re saying no. Look at the facts,” Biden smirked. “I know you know how to read.” Biden also engineered a predictable but successful trap by praising a bipartisan border-security bill that Republicans killed at Donald Trump’s behest. When Republicans booed, Biden broke out into a broad, Cheshire-cat smile. “Oh, you don’t like that bill?” he said. “I’ll be darned.”
The exchanges were a gift to Biden, whose aides had hinted that he wanted to talk back to hecklers, just as he did last year. They see these moments as opportunities for Biden to prove that he’s fast on his feet and not the senile shell some of his critics say he is. For the second year in a row, Republicans set a very low bar for Biden’s speech, and once again, he cleared it without much trouble.
Intelligencer’s Jonathan Chait explains that after Biden defied the feeble expectations they set for him, Trump and his allies decided to claim the president was Barry Bonds–ing it with performance-enhancing drugs:
It is theoretically possible, I suppose, that an 81-year-old teetotaling Catholic has suddenly embarked upon a drug-fueled lifestyle. But this raises the question of why, exactly, we should care that Biden is using these wonder drugs to elevate his public performance. After all, in sports, we limit steroid use and other performance-enhancing drugs because those drugs have awful side effects, and give those willing to accept them an unfair advantage. What are the side effects of Biden’s alleged drug use? (Other Trump posts mentioned Biden’s coughing, which, if true, seem like an acceptable trade-off for turning a dementia-riddled zombie into a sprightly leader.)
The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan seemed at least somewhat impressed:
The great question the past month was about his persona. Would he walk in shakily? When he was done, would we be using words like old, frail, incapable, embarrassing? We won’t. People will say that guy has a lot of fight in him. He was wide awake, seemed to be relishing the moment, did not seem to tire much, and in fact improved as the speech moved along.
He showed energy and focus, blurred some words and thoughts, maintained a brisk pace. He almost never spoke softly. He sometimes yelled. There was a give-’em-hell-Harry vibration, as if he’d been reading up on Truman. The White House meant to quell growing Democratic fears on the president’s age and acuity. They succeeded, at least for a while. Congressional Democrats looked happy to the point of bubbly when it was over.
It can also be said the president often maintained an indignant and hectoring tone that he confuses with certitude and commitment. In the end I don’t know if the speech came across to a viewer at home as strong and focused or, as has been said, “Angry Old Man Yells at Clouds.” That probably depends on where you stand on Joe Biden.
New York Times deputy opinion editor Patrick Healy points to history:
Most State of the Union addresses don’t shape re-election outcomes, as was the case with Trump’s in 2020 or George H.W. Bush’s in 1992, but they can help define a president’s narrative, as Bill Clinton did with the economy, George W. Bush did with national security and Barack Obama did with health care.
If Biden can repeat this performance on the campaign trail and in interviews, it could be a State of the Union that has legs. And why not? He seemed nimble: One of his best moments was a quick comeback when he was facing Republican boos about tax cut ideas and he quipped, “I kind of thought that’s what your plan was.” It was a good line. A guy who can do that can find ways on the trail to show voters that, regardless of age, he’s still pretty vigorous.
Intelligencer’s Ed Kilgore was simultaneously befuddled and creeped out, noting that “if Britt’s speech was alternatively lurid and banal, it was the delivery that really grabbed you, and not in a good way”:
Like she was auditioning for a soap-opera role that required a broad range of over-the-top emotions, Britt went from weepy to furious to gleeful to solemn, and executed abrupt changes in pitch and volume. …
Perhaps like Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana wonder-boy who bombed in his State of the Union response to Barack Obama in 2009, Britt felt the need to talk down to her audience, or maybe she was over-coached. At one point, she said “the American Dream has turned into a nightmare.” Personally, I fear I will encounter Katie Britt in my nightmares, whispering “we see you” until I wake up screaming.
One widely shared tweet among bemused critics of Britt’s speech on Thursday night made that exact comparison using a Curb Your Enthusiasm clip:
katie britt giving this right now pic.twitter.com/7fO5B1kXda
At the New York Times, Michelle Cottle acknowledges that many of the people expressing revulsion over Britt’s awkward SOTU response weren’t the target audience:
Overemotional, apocalyptic, inappropriately personal, unbalanced — this is how an awful lot of Trump voters are feeling. They are convinced the American dream is indeed on the verge of collapse, that the end of civilization is nigh and that the liberal hordes are coming for their families. They are looking for leaders who don’t just validate their panic but seem to share it. It is perhaps worth noting that Donald Trump was singing Britt’s praises afterward on his site: “Katie Britt was a GREAT contrast to an Angry, and obviously very Disturbed, ‘President.’”
The senator’s performance may have given me a morning migraine. But I’m guessing there were plenty of other folks, including much of the MAGAverse, who found it spot-on.
Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse, noting how Britt’s comm team advised supporters to call her “America’s mom” in a pre-speech memo, wonders if that whole vibe worked:
When Britt did appear, it became clear she’d gone balls-to-the-wall with the mom theme, broadcasting solo from her Alabama kitchen in such a way that, if you were watching with the volume down, you would have assumed you had stumbled upon a commercial for either stain remover or Il Makiage. Turn the volume up and there was Britt opening by saying that her proudest role was being a “wife and mother,” before segueing into describing a violent gang rape, before calling Biden “dithering and diminished,” and explaining that we were all “steeped in the blood of patriots,” which, ladies — if that’s a menstruation euphemism I hadn’t heard it before. Somehow she wrapped up by talking about how America put a man on the moon. …
Women are not monolith, and I am assuming there were plenty of viewers who were very moved by Britt’s rebuttal. Toward the end, when she stared into the camera and implored, “Tonight, I want to make a direct appeal to the parents out there — and in particular, to my fellow moms.” She later continued, “First of all, we see you, we hear you, and we stand with you.”
But moms aren’t monolith, either. And so it wasn’t entirely clear which ones she thought she was representing, sitting there in her kitchen. Some may have seen themselves in the latest Republican to talk about how women and moms figure into their vision for America. Others have seen enough elsewhere to know where they stand.
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