Did you trip over your feet? Did you make an indefensible mistake? No, fellow countrymen, he did not.
I admit, the bar was set in a pretty strange place for President Biden's State of the Union address on Thursday. After all, he is the oldest American president. And although he is only four years older than his presumptive November opponent, former President Trump, 77, hysteria over Biden's age has become a permanent feature of the national political debate.
opinion columnist
Robin Abcarian
Take a tranquilizer, people.
Our 81-year-old commander-in-chief was in excellent shape. His speech, which lasted just over an hour, was many things: a serious explanation of the country's status at home and in the world, a plan for a second Biden administration and a stump speech that included repeated verbal jousting with his hecklers. republicans.
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You could practically hear the collective sigh of relief from shaky-kneed Democrats, who have been all too willing to let questions about Biden's age cloud their support for his re-election.
Some even said the not-so-quiet part out loud.
“No one is going to talk about cognitive impairment now!” exclaimed New York Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler.
“Some times I would was with cognitive disabilities,” Biden joked.
Their post-speech conversation was captured by C-SPAN microphones, which kept cameras focused on the president and his crowd of supporters as he made his way through the House chamber. Watching it, I felt like I was listening at a very high level.
“Those interruptions!” one member exclaimed to Biden.
“It's a game they play,” the president responded. “They did it last time. I said, 'Anyone who wants to cut Social Security, raise your hand.'” (That moment was a highlight of last year's State of the Union and appears to have set something of a template for the boisterous back-and-forth I saw on Thursday. What a contrast to the moment in 2009, when South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson, yelled “You lie!” at President Obama. I can still imagine the expression of anger and disapproval on then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. How quaint that seems now. .)
As Biden moved around the room, Democrats praised him.
“You turned us all on!”
“That was a sermon!”
“You kicked ass and took names!”
“You brought the Irish fire tonight!”
There were some serious exchanges, too: “I told Bibi,” I heard Biden say to Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, who had said something about Israel. I strained to hear what came next but, to my frustration, it was inaudible.
In any case, by most accounts, the speech itself was a triumph.
Thirteen times, Biden confronted former President Trump – “my predecessor” – without deigning to name him, and he quelled rude members who taunted and yelled, silencing them with pointed responses.
Biden's words were filled with disdain for Trump as he vowed to stick with Ukraine in its war with Russia. “We will not leave, we will not bow down,” she said, invoking Trump's rare deference to Vladimir Putin.
He criticized Republicans for blocking the bipartisan border security bill at the behest of their beloved leader, and when they booed him, he deviated from his prepared remarks. “Oh, you don't like that bill, huh? That the conservatives got together and said it was a good bill? I will be damned. …What are you opposed to?” (His re-election, obviously).
He addressed the denialism of January 6: “My predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth of January 6. I won't do that. This is the time to tell the truth and bury the lies. And here is the simplest truth: you can't love your country only when you win.”
Biden stole the thunder from Georgia's super-loud Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Say Her Name,” a reference to a Georgia nursing student who was murdered by a suspect who, according to authorities, is in the country illegally. “Laken Riley, an innocent young woman who was murdered by an illegal,” Biden said, using an unfortunate term and mispronouncing her name as “Lincoln,” but she still took the wind out of MTG's sails.
He also spoke directly to Riley's parents, who had been invited to attend the speech but declined. “My heart goes out to you for losing children,” Biden added. “I understand.”
Biden looked directly at the Supreme Court justices, six of whom were sitting in the front row, and declared that if voters gave him a Democratic majority in Congress, he would restore the federal right to abortion.
“My God,” she said, summing up the fears of those who believe passionately in reproductive rights, “what freedoms would you take away next?”
On a grand scale, this is precisely the question Americans face when choosing their next president.
Do we want a spiteful man who has promised to seek vengeance and vengeance against his enemies and has declared that he would be a dictator from day one?
Or do we want an empathetic president who promises to “defend democracy, not diminish it” and who will “always be a president for all Americans”?
