President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday night will give him a chance to lay out the policy priorities for his fourth year in office.
But it also presents an opportunity for him to make his case to an increasingly skeptical public before November’s general election that he, not former President Donald Trump, should get a second term.
When Biden addresses a joint session of Congress from House Speaker Mike Johnson‘s (R-LA) rostrum, it will be the most important speech of his career, according to Douglas Heye, the former communications director for the Republican National Committee.
“A big part of that is, exactly, there’s so much riding on it,” Heye told the Washington Examiner. “We are now, without a doubt, in a general election, and Biden’s very aware of that.”
Two days after Super Tuesday all but cemented a rematch of 2020, the State of the Union will be one of the largest, “unfiltered” platforms Biden will have between now and Election Day, said former White House spokesman Eric Schultz, particularly since there may not be any debates.
“The president’s mission is to remind the country why he earned our support four years ago and to demonstrate why he deserves another four,” said Schultz, the former principal deputy press secretary to President Barack Obama. “The speech can always be a policy hodge-podge, but if Biden can remind us why we believe in him, he’ll have accomplished all he needs to.”
Biden’s style is set to be more significant than his substance, Heye agreed, especially amid speculation about Biden’s 81 years of age and his memory fueled by special counsel Robert Hur‘s report.
“It decreases the expectations, but it raises the stakes,” Heye said. “Except for this group here that wants to hear specific language on an issue and that group over there, same thing, which happens at every State of the Union, this is about how Biden performs in the moment. If he has a senior moment, what does that mean, and is that the takeaway from the speech?”
Though Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley downplayed the State of the Union, he predicted that “people are going to go watch Biden for the same reason they go to a car race: just to see a car wreck.”
“There’s a Biden malaise in the country. People are unhappy. People are miserable. People don’t feel good about the future. They don’t feel good about the future for their children. And he doesn’t know how to fix that,” Shirley said. “It’s going to be a lot of panacea. And it’s not going to be grounded in reality. That’s the problem.”
Meanwhile, Heye brought up concerns among Democrats about Biden’s strategy amid the Israel–Hamas war following organized and organic protest votes in the presidential primary.
“What he says on Gaza is going to be very important to 101,000 Democrats in Michigan and 87,000 Democrats in North Carolina. OK, we know that,” he said. “If he has a bad moment, that is going to be the major takeaway of the event. No doubt about it.”
The University of Michigan’s Aaron Kall, who co-wrote and edited The State of the Union is…: Memorable Addresses of the Last Sixty Years, was mindful that the audiences for these presidential speeches have steadily declined, with Biden’s being watched by 27 million people last year, compared to the almost 70 million who tuned in to Bill Clinton in the early 1990s.
“Presidents used to receive approval boosts of a few percentage points following well-received speeches, but the extreme amount of partisanship these days makes it nearly impossible to move the needle much,” Kall, Michigan’s director of debate, said. “That being said, the audience on Thursday night will be quite large, and it may contain some persuadable voters who are just starting to pay attention to the 2024 election.”
“Nothing President Biden does in an hourlong speech will likely change any minds long-term, but it could be the start of a positive media cycle that can be extended by successful trips across the country featuring the president and select campaign surrogates,” he added.
To that end, Biden will be in Pennsylvania on Friday and Georgia on Saturday “to underscore what’s at stake in this election and the choice facing voters,” according to his campaign, with Trump also expected to be in the Peach State this weekend after losing it to the president by 12,00 votes, or less than a point, in 2020.
Since Biden’s inauguration in 2021, his average approval has trended down from 53% to 40%, according to FiveThirtyEight. In five-way polling that takes into account third-party and independent candidates, Trump has an average 3-point lead over Biden, 41% and 38%, per RealClearPolitics.
“The voting coalition that propelled Biden to victory in 2020 is fracturing, while Trump is polling well with independent voters,” Kall said. “Another strong performance like the 2023 State of the Union address could provide some reassurance to nervous voters. Biden mixed it up with agitators during that speech while defending the importance of protecting entitlement programs.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reminded reporters of Biden’s interactions with Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) during last year’s State of the Union after Speaker Johnson this week asked his Republican conference for “decorum” during the speech.
“He called them out on it while they were obviously heckling at him, so the president’s ready for anything,” Jean-Pierre said. “He got this. … The president’s got this.”
Jean-Pierre also previewed Biden’s State of the Union, saying the president will “talk about the success in implementing his agenda, from infrastructure to CHIPS to lowering drug prices and getting rid of junk fees.”
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“He will talk about whose side he is on and his plan to improve the lives of all Americans,” the press secretary said.
“The president has always been an optimistic person,” she continued. “Even in the face of challenges that we have in front of us, he will share why he is hopeful about this country’s future and why it is a mistake to bet against the American people.”