(Before) State of the Union
Ahead of Pres. Biden’s State of the Union address, Sec. Pete Buttigieg tells Jon Karl that Biden can “make the case” that the economy is back on track. Biden privately invited Tyre Nichols’s parents and Brandon Tsay, the Monterey Park hero who disarmed the killer - gunman.
GOP Sarah Huckabee Sanders admitted in the Mueller Report that she lied as Trump's press secretary. Since lying is a required ritual in the Republican Party, she's the perfect choice to give the response to the State of the Union. Hours after Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union Address to Congress, House Republicans will launch their promised investigation into alleged Biden family “influence peddling.” This Monday (Feb 6th), Biden is returning to the White House from a weekend at Camp David, where he worked on his State of the Union address. Also today, 55th House Speaker Kevin Owen McCarthy to give an address on the debt ceiling at 5:30pm today ahead of the State of the Union.
In a new era of divided government, the two men will be forced to forge deals on a wide range of issues over the coming two years. Most immediately, they'll need to figure out how to deescalate a standoff over the debt ceiling that could crater the economy, if it isn't resolved before the U.S. defaults on its debt.
Biden and McCarthy are both backslapping political lifers — two men who put high priority on the value of personal relationships. So the terse, blunt answers they've recently given about each other speak volumes.
"I think he's the Republican leader, and I haven't had much of an occasion to talk to him," Biden said, before quickly shifting topics, when asked about McCarthy in the immediate wake of November's election.
It's a sharp contrast to Biden's dealings with the other top Republican in Congress — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
When McCarthy was fighting for his job last month in round after round of speaker votes, Biden and McConnell were holding a political event together marking the bipartisan infrastructure law.
In Biden's final days as vice president, McConnell memorably praised Biden, and moved to rename a piece of legislation after Biden's late son Beau, as Biden presided over the chamber and wiped tears from his eyes.
With very slight margin in House (although Democrat wins Senate), Biden will call for tougher regulation of Silicon Valley in his State of the Union address, which will touch on antitrust and privacy protections, and also disinformation towards Election 2024. Biden, Harris will hit the 2024 swing states after State of the Union.
Biden has not yet officially announced whether he has decided to make good on what he has said is his intention to run for a second term in office. But he's expected to do so in the near future. The State of the Union speech, and its large broadcast audience, is an opportunity to show what he plans to run on — and that he has what it takes for a grueling reelect race as the oldest presidential candidate in history.
"This speech is undoubtedly being seen in the White House as part of the reelect effort," said Peter Wehner, who wrote speeches for former President George W. Bush. "And what that means is this is a kind of speech that begins to lay out the broad contours of a reelection campaign."
Americans expressed scant confidence in President Joe Biden and his party heading into the 2023 State of the Union address. Yet wide majorities also lack faith in their Republican counterparts, and a new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds. Presidents of both parties have used this annual speech to spell out their agenda, and express — sometimes indirectly — how that agenda differs from the opposition. But still a big challenge in economy. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says that the probability of a US recession this year is low as she touts job growth and low unemployment on the eve of President Biden’s State of the Union address.
"State of the Unions at their very best are often eloquent laundry lists, but they're also political speeches," said Michael Waldman, lead speechwriter on four of former President Bill Clinton's State of the Union addresses.
"And it's a very political season and people are already running for president ... and so you're going to hear, I'm sure, a contrast between Democrats and Republicans play out on the screen in this speech," Waldman said.
In his 1995 State of the Union, Clinton was facing a newly elected Republican Congress after the Republican Revolution in the 1994 midterms, in which the GOP took control of the House for the first time in 40 years. GOP Speaker Newt Gingrich (1995-1997), surprisingly, visit Taiwan in 1997, become the first high-level US official to visit Taiwan after the country had snapped its ties with the island to recognize the communist government on the mainland in 1979. He was to go on an Asian tour that included visits to Japan, South Korea along with China.
Pundits had interpreted the midterm elections as a clear rebuke of Clinton, and people questioned whether he had any political future.
But Clinton found opportunity in that moment of political peril, his former speechwriters said. He tried to use charm to show he could reach across the aisle.
"Bill Clinton, he always had the hand out," said Carolyn Curiel, one of his speechwriters. "There is nobody he didn't want to befriend, even those who had done him harm in politics and otherwise. And if he took the stage with any feelings that were bad, he let them go. Because you need as many people in the room as possible to think, 'He's not a bad guy. Maybe I can work with him.'
Democrats didn't face a huge political rebuke last November — they did better than expected in the midterms.
Biden faces a different lingering question — his age, said multiple former speechwriters, both Republican and Democrat.
"He would be 86 at the end of the second term. It's an issue that's going to be it's going to be on people's minds," said Waldman. "And he will want to use this a forum to show he's vigorous, he's commanding."
In somewhat classic Biden fashion, the timeline for an announcement has shifted, according to four people familiar with the decision.
Originally pegged to March or April, in part for fundraising purposes, there had been talk of moving an announcement up to late February. That now may have slipped again as the White House grapples with the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the discovery of mishandled classified documents at Biden’s Delaware home and former office.
Biden advisers have downplayed the impact of the discovery — pointing to his unchanged approval rating in the face of the controversy. They believe the Democrats’ triumphs in November squelched any talk of an intra-party challenger and bought the 80-year-old president time to make his decision. One example, questioned why Biden too long to decide shoot down Chinese Balloon Spy.
Still, Biden faces challenges heading into Tuesday’s address.
A divided Washington and a growing array of challenges could define his presidency in the months ahead. House Republicans are ramping up their investigations. The battle for Ukraine continues to rage. And in just the last fortnight, the nation has been left reeling by video of a brutal deadly assault of a Black man at the hands of police.
Biden is expected to rally Americans on Tuesday with the notion that the nation is at an inflection point as it emerges from the COVID pandemic and the trials put forth by Donald Trump’s time in office.
A year ago, Biden delivered his first State of the Union just days after Vladimir Putin sent his Russian forces over the Ukrainian border. The fate of Kyiv hung in the balance and Biden used a sweeping portion of his speech to argue that the defense of Ukraine was a defense of democracies around the globe.
The (prolonged) Russia - Ukraine war has settled into a grinding slog with Kyiv clamoring for more weapons to defend itself for months if not years. Biden, aides said, will outline to the public why continued, sustained American involvement is needed. He will urge Republicans to ignore the voices in their own party who want to curtail funding to Ukraine.
Another standoff with Republicans will also be central to Biden’s pitch: the need to lift the nation’s debt ceiling. He will make clear that he will not negotiate on the country’s fiscal future, connecting it to his stewardship of the economy. Though inflation remains high, it has begun to cool, and the president is expected to point to historically low unemployment, strong jobs numbers and a growing feeling among economists that the nation could avoid a recession.
“There should be a focus on tone: be firm without [being] combative,” said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist who was a senior adviser on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. “And there has to be an acknowledgment of the pain inflation has caused. It can’t just be ‘happy talk’ about what they’ve done on the economy. You run the risk of looking out of touch.”
Any State of the Union is of the moment, and reflective of the challenges facing the country when it is delivered. In recent days, Biden aides have inserted sections into the speech on the collective traumas suffered by the nation last month.
In the wake of several mass shootings, including two in California just days apart, Biden will again call for a ban on assault weapons, an idea that has little chance of receiving Republican support. And he will likely mourn with the nation over Tyre Nichols, a Black man who died at the hands of Memphis police officers last month, trying to thread the needle of showing support for law enforcement while also advocating for police reform.
On Friday, speaking to the Democratic National Committee, Biden wasn’t mincing his words. “Jobs are up, wages are up, inflation is down, and COVID no longer controls our lives,” Biden said. “But now, the extreme MAGA Republicans in the House of Representatives have made it clear they intend to put it all at risk. They intend to destroy it.” Biden should challenge the GOP’s seriousness on the deficit. They avoid specify on cuts & only its most candid supply-siders are willing to say outright they think protecting rich people from higher taxes is a good thing.
Seeing as the newly elected House majority is already bent on weaponizing itself to go on the attack against Biden and the Democrats rather than pursue actual governance, count me among those who hope he hits hard and reminds the nation his leading obstacles are sitting in the House chamber.
While fellow American can expect that he will continue Tuesday night his refrain for unity and bipartisanship, the Republican’s choice for rebuttal makes clear that they are more interested in continuing conflict, chaos and lies. Speaker McCarthy praised the choice of newly elected Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders for her “bold vision for a better America.” It's important in Biden's longer-term project of both being normal and in sort of restoring the soul of the country by reconnecting people to their civic rituals.
Sanders—who tossed away her credibility by standing before the White House press corps for two years as Trump’s press secretary—promised her rebuttal would offer the “GOP’s optimistic vision,” which includes “a new generation of leaders ready to defend our freedom against the radical left.” Much like her previous service to her country, don’t expect any serious effort to tell the truth.
The president, always deliberative, will consider his political future by making more rounds of calls to his longtime allies, talking through themes and timing, pushed by a belief that he remains the one Democrat who could defeat Trump. Most close to Biden believe that, soon enough, an official campaign will begin in earnest.
Biden's working relationship with the Senate leader is grounded in two things McConnell has that McCarthy doesn't have: decades of time in the legislative trenches alongside Biden; and perhaps more importantly, a firm grip over the politics of his caucus.
McConnell is the longest-serving Senate leader from either party. McCarthy, on the other hand, needed 15 rounds of voting to win the speakership this year. With the narrow margins his party holds, he's constantly at the mercy of whatever small group of House Republicans who threaten to vote no.
That's a position the White House has been happy to highlight and politically exploit.
Since Republicans have taken control of the House, the Biden administration has tried to frame the GOP as split between two wings: one that is at times willing to help govern and pass bills on a bipartisan basis; the other, an extreme faction still under the sway of former President Donald Trump.
Biden says a congressional debt ceiling vote shouldn't come with any preconditions. McCarthy is refusing to raise it without an agreement to cut spending elsewhere.
Last week, the president and speaker met in the Oval Office for an hour.
"He gave me his perspective. I gave him our perspective," McCarthy said afterwards. "I believe in hearing both perspectives, like anything else, be it business, be it in family, be it in relationships — that you can find common ground."
One thing that's different from those types of relationships: the fate of the entire economy typically doesn't ride on their ability to get on the same page.