The president’s speech presented no big new proposals, but he offered to work with Republicans even as he parried hecklers and sought to allay Democratic concerns about his vigor heading into 2024.
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President Biden bragged nearly a dozen times about his administration’s accomplishments, but said he had more to do.
President Biden delivered a plea to Republicans on Tuesday for unity in his second State of the Union address, but vowed not to back off his economic agenda and offered no far-reaching, new ideas in a speech filled with a familiar litany of exhortations from more than four decades in political life.
Reading rapidly through his prepared remarks and occasionally sparring with his congressional adversaries in real time, Mr. Biden — at 80 the oldest president in history — used the biggest platform of his office to frame his argument for an expected re-election bid by portraying Republican policy proposals as out of step with most Americans even as he offered to work across the aisle.
For Mr. Biden, the speech was a moment to demonstrate to his supporters that he still has the political skills to lead them to victory in 2024 even as polls show a large majority of Democrats want someone from a new generation (he would be 86 at the end of a second term). After a few stumbles at the beginning, the president turned energetic and combative, and even showed flashes of humor and effective off-the-cuff retorts to Republican hecklers in a setting not known for improvisation.
His performance could help address doubts about his vigor as a 2024 campaigner.
At key moments, Republicans heckled Mr. Biden with shouts of “liar” and angry shakes of their head. But if the goal was to rattle the president or demonstrate his frailty, it had the opposite effect. Mr. Biden snapped back at the Republican shouters with sharp retorts and even a sense of humor in some moments. When Republicans accused him of misstating their desire to cut Medicare and Social Security, the president turned the heckling against them, saying quickly that he was glad to see their “conversion” on the issue.
For Mr. Biden’s supporters — some of whom have expressed doubts about whether he is up to another six years in office — the moment was an opportunity to imagine how the president will perform on the 2024 campaign trail. For the president’s campaign advisers, his agility on his feet was most likely a source of relief.
He defined his rationale for a second term.
In an hourlong speech, Mr. Biden repeatedly pledged that America needs to “finish the job,” a barely veiled argument that voters should give him a second term to do just that. Nearly a dozen times, he bragged about his administration’s accomplishments — on keeping drug prices low, increasing taxes on the wealthy, making child care and housing affordable, and more — but said he had more to do.
After two years in office, the president’s assessment of the country’s progress was intended as a hinge to his next campaign, a way to set up the terms of debate, whether he faces former President Donald J. Trump again or another Republican contender.
He scaled back his agenda for an era of divided government.
Mr. Biden returned again and again to a familiar set of assertions that have become part of his presidential routine: a pledge to “restore the soul of the nation”; a promise to “build an economy from the bottom up and the middle out”; efforts to create “an economy where no one is left behind”; criticism of “big tech” and “big oil”; and references to advice for “Joey” from his father.
But there were no major new initiatives in Mr. Biden’s address, a nod to the reality of divided government, with Republicans now controlling the House. That was a striking departure from the president’s previous appearances before a Democratic-controlled Congress, when he called for trillions of dollars in new spending to significantly reshape government programs on health care, child care, climate change, taxes, infrastructure and more.
He did not back off from those priorities, some of which he managed to achieve, at least in part, over the past two years, and he renewed his call for others. But on Tuesday night, his focus was on less ambitious proposals aimed at stepping up efforts to cure cancer, improve mental health care, fight opioid addiction and help veterans.
He emphasized threats to democracy at home and abroad.
At the end of the speech, Mr. Biden returned to one of the biggest themes of his presidency — that the United States and the world stand at an “inflection point” in history, with democracy at stake at home and abroad. As he has before, the president linked “the Big Lie” about the 2020 election to the war in Ukraine, which threatens the sovereignty of a European nation for the first time in a generation.
But unlike former President George W. Bush, who used his 2002 State of the Union address to declare an “axis of evil” on the eve of the Iraq war, Mr. Biden urged Americans to remain optimistic and hopeful as a way of inspiring supporters of democracy elsewhere. Declaring that “we are not bystanders to history,” the president said the United States must confront hate and extremism, referring to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
The president talked up the economy, with a big focus on blue-collar workers.
Mr. Biden spent the first half of his speech describing what he said was the nation’s economic progress, including a record 12 million jobs created in the first two years of his presidency. He ran through the economic benefits — many of them just starting to come online — from bills he signed to invest in infrastructure, advanced manufacturing and low-emission sources of energy, along with reducing the cost of prescription drugs.
But the president lingered in particular on the parts of his agenda that he says would help blue-collar workers, often in parts of the country that have been left behind in the changing global economy. He stressed spending that will create high-paying jobs that do not require a college degree — clear outreach to the wide swath of swing voters in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan who did not graduate from college.
Aides had said Mr. Biden would acknowledge in his speech the continued economic pain Americans feel, particularly from rising prices, and Mr. Biden did to a degree. But he spent most of energy trying to sell workers on the gains the economy has made on his watch and casting himself as a fighter for their interests.
He baited Republicans on Social Security and Medicare.
Mr. Biden has regularly hammered Republicans over some members’ plans to reduce future spending on Social Security and Medicare. He did it again in the speech, and this time, he baited some Republican lawmakers into agreeing with him on the issue.
Mr. Biden started by caricaturing a plan from Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, which would force Congress to reauthorize existing programs, including Social Security and Medicare, every five years. “Some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset,” he said.
Republicans in the chamber loudly objected to the characterization. Mr. Biden shot back: “Anybody who doubts it contact my office. I’ll give you a copy.”
The Republican boos and objections grew louder. Mr. Biden parried back and forth with the critics in the crowd. Then he declared victory. “So folks, as we all apparently agree, Social Security, Medicare is off the books now, right? All right. We’ve got unanimity.”
Biden made a forceful call for police accountability.
Mr. Biden has always opposed the “defund the police” calls from some on the left of his party, but on Tuesday night he used his speech to condemn the lethal police beating of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols in Memphis and made an impassioned call for more police accountability.
“Imagine if you lost that child at the hands of the law,” Mr. Biden said after pointing out that Mr. Nichols’s mother and stepfather, RowVaughn and Rodney Wells, were sitting in the first lady’s box, prompting a standing ovation. “Imagine having to worry whether your son or daughter will come home from walking down the street, playing in the park or just driving their car.”
In an example of his instinct to reach for a middle ground, Mr. Biden, however, still struck a balance between calling for change and expressing support for the police, whom he said were “good, decent, honorable people.” He called for supporting law enforcement with additional resources to increase training for officers.
The president is limited in just how much he can reform state and local police departments. But he has faced increasing pressure from Democrats and supporters of overhauling the criminal justice system to push more forcefully for legislation advancing their goals.
“Let’s commit ourselves to make the words of Tyre’s mom true,” Mr. Biden said. “Something good must come from this.”
Source: nytimes.com
