Joe Biden drove up to Capitol Hill last week to deliver his final State of the Union address to Congress before November’s pivotal US election with public expectations at rock bottom. He returned to the White House a few hours later with all flags flying and the cheers of grateful (and relieved) Democrats ringing in his ears. Biden had survived what could easily have turned into a wake for his unpopular presidency. More than that, he had scored a personal mini-triumph which, for now at least, has boosted faith in his ability to win a second term.
The reasons so little was expected of Biden are not difficult to discern. He is 81 and many Americans – 73% of all registered voters, according to one recent poll – believe he is too old to be an effective second-term president. Even among Democrat voters, confidence has slipped since 2020. Only 28% are enthusiastic about his candidacy, while 38% think the party should pick someone else. Views of Donald Trump, 77, the likely Republican nominee, are barely more positive. About 42% of all registered voters say he is too old.
The age factor is but one of many worries for Biden’s re-election campaign. Only one in four voters believes he is leading the country in the right direction. Opinion polls consistently show an across-the-board loss of support among voters classed by education, race and gender. And a majority is critical of Biden’s handling of the economy – always the biggest issue – despite record high employment figures, falling inflation and hopeful signs, for him, of an accelerating pre-election recovery. Nationally, Trump currently leads by an average of two points.
Yet if Biden had a hill to climb, physically and politically, as he made his way up to the Capitol, it was not reflected in a combative, bravura performance. Biden is a veteran of these set-piece events and refused to be thrown by fierce Republican heckling. Instead, he confronted the age question head-on. “The issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are, it’s how old are our ideas,” he said. “Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are the oldest of ideas. But you can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back. To lead America, the land of possibilities, you need a vision for the future.”
The line about revenge and retribution was one of numerous, not so subtly veiled references to Trump, to whom Biden referred throughout as “my predecessor”. It was as if the very name of the man who has spent the past four years calling him a liar, a fraud and an election cheat stuck in his craw. That’s no surprise. Biden hammered home his view that the threat posed to democracy, in America and around the world, by Trump and his fanatical Maga movement was basically no different from that posed by Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, following his illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Ukraine could win the war, Biden insisted, if it was given the military support it needs – but that meant ending the stalemate in Congress over additional US aid. Yet Trump simply didn’t care. He had told Putin to “ ‘do whatever the hell you want’… I think it’s outrageous, it’s dangerous, and it’s unacceptable,” Biden said. Defending “freedom and democracy” will be one of his signature themes this autumn.
Again and again, Biden turned his wrath and scorn on Trump and the Republicans. One by one, he picked on other issues that, if he has his way, will define the election. Foremost among them were the 6 January insurrection, the evisceration of abortion rights by Trump-appointed supreme court justices, Republican support for tax cuts for big business and the wealthy, the party’s opposition to meaningful gun controls and its cynical blocking of a law to curb migration along the Mexican border.
Yet for many Americans and a watching world, there was disappointment that Biden’s passionate outrage did not extend to the humanitarian emergency in Gaza, although he tried hard to sound indignant. Having previously questioned the figures, he endorsed the total of 30,000 Palestinian dead, “most of whom are not Hamas”. The US would build a pier off the coast to facilitate aid supplies, he said. He was working hard to establish “an immediate ceasefire that would last for six weeks”. But there was no initiative to end the war, no real criticism of Israel’s actions, no measures to oblige it to desist. For Biden, Israel is a blindspot, lethal for Palestinians and potentially deadly, too, for his re-election hopes.
More campaign event than constitutional ritual, this was not a typical State of the Union address. Biden was frequently interrupted in mid-flow yet he seemed to relish the knockabout, serving up rhetoric and mockery with equal gusto and avoiding trademark gaffes. This rude, raucous occasion accurately mirrored the overall state of American society: divided, partisan, angry, discontented. It’s a society where people appear to have largely stopped listening to opposing views and arguments.
Biden is a conviction politician. Unlike the dissimulating, unprincipled Trump, he believes strongly in what he says and the values he espouses. Yet Biden is a performer, too. He used Congress as a stage to demonstrate, primarily to watching TV viewers, that there is plenty of fight left in the old dog. His bottom-line message: old or not, like me or loathe me, I’m the guy you need at a time of acute national peril. Will the voters buy it a second time? We’ll soon see.
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