Joe Biden’s State of the Union might change some voters’ minds, but he’s no Abe Lincoln | Opinion
Editor’s note: Kansas City Star Opinion writers watched President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address Thursday night and gave their own perspectives. Read Melinda Henneberger’s column here. — Yvette Walker
Behind in the race for president in key battleground states, facing an electorate where most registered voters think he is not fit for office and with most members of his own party wishing someone else was the Democratic nominee, President Joe Biden turned in a creditable performance that may change a few minds.
I couldn’t give an hourlong speech with fewer flubs and greater command of the floor than Biden did with eight decades behind him. He did what he needed to do, but will that be enough?
For a man whose 50 year in politics have been building to what was billed as the most significant speech of his career, Biden is not in control. Broadly unpopular with political headwinds driven by inflation and the border crisis, what happens next depends more on Biden’s unnamed “predecessor” than it does on him.
Will the unstoppable, unflappable Donald Trump of 2016 show up now that he has claimed the Republican nomination or will that other orange guy, the loser whose brand of politics bolloxed every general election since 2016, drive the party of Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower into the ditch yet again?
Biden had the chance tonight to deliver a real blow to Trump with the power of a nationally televised speech and millions of viewers, but when his speech reached its rhetorical crescendo, it fell flat.
The line Biden wanted viewers to remember about his age was the claim that it “isn’t how old we are, it is how old are our ideas.” What Biden delivered was old Democrat warmed over. Preschool for kids, raise the minimum wage, raises for teachers, new taxes on the wealthy and corporations, protect Medicare and Social Security, gun control, union power. Much of his speech could have been delivered by any Democratic president or nominee for the last century. Jimmy Dukakis and Barack O’Clinton want their speeches back.
Whatever you say about Trump, he’s something new on the American scene. Alarming, unhinged and out of control, but new. On this, Biden failed.
The president was at his best when he took on the border crisis, ad-libbing like a younger politician and taking on the Republicans on their own territory, he made a credible case that the GOP is standing in the way of curbing the border crisis to bolster Trump’s chances in November.
On crime he tried to have it both ways, dragging out the sister of a Uvalde victim to tout gun control, but arguing that murder is under control. Whatever the facts, it is hard to argue that violence is a figment of GOP imaginations when the Democratic governors of both California and New York have called out the National Guard to deal with crime in their states’ big cities.
Speaking of having it both ways, Biden’s least plausible moment was when he announced a plan to intervene militarily in the Gaza crisis without putting any “boots on the ground.” Doing something about the humanitarian situation in Gaza will take more of a commitment.
Biden began his speech invoking Abraham Lincoln and warning of a Civil War-sized threat to American democracy. Those were big shoes to fill for a politician from Scranton and, after the speech, they were still mostly empty.
David Mastio, a former editor and columnist for USA Today, is a regional editor for The Center Square and a regular Star Opinion correspondent.
This story was originally published March 8, 2024 at 6:06 AM.