Time to go back to the days when the message was sent to Congress in memo form

As constitutionally mandated administrative reports go, U.S. President Joe Biden’s 2024 state of the union address was quite the jacked-up campaign speech. Biden’s team knew that expectations were low for a man who frequently has senior moments of forgetfulness, as well as verbal stumbles in public, but they managed to please the faithful by putting a bit more vim than usual in the president’s presentation. The speech was neither coherent nor content-rich, let alone necessary. But for several minutes, it was at least loud.

Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.

Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.

Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.

Don't have an account? Create Account

“History is watching, just like history watched three years ago on Jan. 6,” Biden yelled a bit more than five minutes into a speech that was somewhat delayed by anti-Israel protests. “Insurrectionists stormed this very Capitol and placed a dagger at the throat of American democracy. Many of you were here on that darkest of days. We all saw with our own eyes these insurrectionists were not patriots. They’d come to stop the peaceful transfer of power, to overstern the will of the people.”

“Overstern” was supposed to be “overturn,” but that’s not a terrible fumble for a president who was famously inarticulate, even before his mental acuity began to slip. His shouty delivery, at least in the early minutes, won praise from fans in the media who described it as “energetic” and “feisty.” But that’s not to say the public was moved.

“Roughly three in 10 Americans say President Joe Biden outperformed their expectations at Thursday’s state of the union address,” an Ipsos poll found after the fact. “While the president exceeded expectations for some, his approval rating on key issues remains unchanged, as the........

© National Post