Biden’s State of the Union Was a Repeat Performance
Trapped between the wings of his party, the president had little choice but to keep slogging through with the same old ideas.
Play it again.
Photographer: Jim LoScalzo/Bloomberg
The state of Joe Biden’s presidency is enfeebled. His popularity has been dropping for months. The left and right wings of his party blame each other for that — and for the fact that his legislative agenda is stalled in a Congress his party controls.
Judging from Biden’s State of the Union address, you can’t say the White House is panicking about any of this. Biden didn’t try to set a new direction, whether a moderate or a populist one. He didn’t even announce major new initiatives. With the exception of his opening section about aiding Ukraine against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion — the strongest part of the speech, which got the bipartisan applause it deserved — Biden stayed on familiar ground.