The Press Is Ready to Feast on Biden’s State of the Union

Every president schemes to turn his annual State of the Union address into a media blockbuster. His speechwriters and advisers hone and groom his words with the discipline of big-budget Hollywood rewrite artists. The White House stocks the gallery with a supporting cast of sympathetic notables and heroic persons the president can emotionally exploit to make his political points. As if composing his own annual performance review, the president calls attention to the accomplishments of his previous year and makes promises for the next.

Above all, presidents strain to project a memorable performance through the TV glass. Take notice of me, the president practically shouts. But almost never does the speech reach, let alone hit, that target. Last year, I argued President Joe Biden should just cancel the event. Nobody cares about the SOTU.

Except for this year’s. Thanks to the stream of memory lapses that burble from the president’s lips like a Rocky Mountain stream, his stiff gait, his falls, his use of the shorter and sturdier set of stairs on Air Force One and even his own self-effacing jokes about his age, Biden has effortlessly attracted the volume of attention that makes him the envy of previous presidents. Unfortunately for Joe, it’s the wrong sort of attention because it makes him look infirm — veering into inept. And it’s happening right as the 2024 presidential campaign is on the verge of being set, as a rematch between Biden and Donald Trump.

The amount of media and social media scrutiny that the address will blast at Biden will likely exceed the power of a billion suns. His every handshake coming down the aisle, his every step taken, his every word spoken, will be magnified a hundred times over by the press, his political opposition and voters as they take his measure.

And it’s only fair. Biden is asking for another term, and the press is tasked with vetting the candidates the best they can. At the moment, the biggest question facing the 81-year-old president is if he’s up for another four years in perhaps the most high-pressure, high-stakes job in the world. What about the fact that Biden has a history of stuttering or that he’s been gaffe-ing as if on autopilot for decades? All that’s true, but it doesn’t change the reality about growing concerns growing surrounding his reelection bid.

The Biden-is-too-old criticism has taken center stage in the campaign, much to the horror of media critics like Margaret Sullivan, who fretted last month in her Substack that the press was going to make Biden’s age the “overarching issue” of the campaign. Rather than dispelling the age issue, Sullivan’s column inspired even more discussion of Biden’s advanced years. You can protest all you want about it being wrong to reduce a presidential campaign to a single issue like this, but that’s ultimately up to the voters. And as a reminder, it’s not like this is the first time the question of age has been deployed in political maneuvering. The rap against Bob Dole in 1996 was that at 73, he was the oldest first-time presidential nominee and that, relative to incumbent Bill Clinton, he seemed to be lacking the stamina for such a grueling job. In 1972, when Biden first ran for Senate, he didn’t hesitate to capitalize on his youth and point out the age of the incumbent.

The lead story in Monday’s New York Times about a Times poll gives tangible evidence that even loyal Biden voters don’t necessarily want to give him a return ticket to the White House. The poll found that 61 percent of those who voted for Biden in 2020 now say he is too old to lead effectively. If an overwhelming majority of Biden voters think his age is an issue, overarching or otherwise, he must begin proving otherwise.

Trump voters, on the other hand, are fine with their 77-year-old, even though he gaffes, too, and has less footwork prowess than most retirees on the pickleball court. Less than 1 percent of them say his age should be disqualifying.

Even the nominal leader of the Never Trumpers, Bill Kristol, tells me he thinks Biden’s best State of the Union option is to give an eloquent speech detailing his achievements and agenda and then “announce that he needs to focus 100 percent on governing for the next eight months,” drop out of the race, and say “he looks forward to a vigorous contest among many qualified successors.”

If this were really a Hollywood spectacular and not just a big speech, Biden’s handlers could use the de-aging technology Martin Scorsese relied on to make Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro look younger in The Irishman. But that would only rain more scrutiny down on Biden. The president’s advisers could encourage him to talk a little faster to make him look quick-witted, but that’s a no-go, too. Biden read his 2023 State of the Union address at 126 words per minute. Any faster and he’d end up sounding like Alvin of the Chipmunks. Compare Biden’s speaking rate to Trump’s slug-like 65 words per minute in 2019. If there was any fairness in politics, Trump would be portrayed as the flatlining speaker, not Biden. But politics is almost never fair.

This might not be Biden’s last chance to demonstrate he possesses the mental and physical chops to serve another four years in the White House. This year’s calendar does, after all, contain a nominating convention and a campaign culminating in November. But as the State of the Union is his show and his show alone — in recent decades, between 27 million and 52 million viewers have tuned in — it may be his last best chance to exhibit his vitals.

Biden’s only recourse — providing he has the guts to do it — would be to use the State of the Union address to tackle head-on the notion that “he’s too old” to be president and embrace every gray hair, wrinkle and stretch mark as badges of honor. Instead of making jokes about his age, he could use the occasion to brag about his years of experience, his accrued wisdom, his emotional stability and work ethic, and his demonstrated skill at passing big legislation.

He could even coin a new campaign slogan: Old is the new young. It might be the most honest thing he’s ever said on the stump.

But would it work? Send your predictions to Shafer.Politico@gmail.com. No new email alert subscriptions are being honored at this time. My Twitter account is 16 years old. My Threads accounts isn’t even one. My dead RSS feed is ageless.