Hate of the Union

Worst written and delivered State of the Union Speech in my 67 years. It's not close. What explains the 81-year-old Biden's adrenaline rush? Why was Joe Biden yelling at us?

I vaguely recall watching my first State of the Union speech around age eight or nine. A bespectacled Lyndon Baines Johnson delivered it. His halting, earnest delivery belied an otherwise well-written speech. He lacked the rhetorical skills of his predecessor and certainly John F. Kennedy’s superb speechwriters (Ted Sorenson, etc.), and he was sincere, not excessively partisan, and generally optimistic in outlook.

This photo perfectly sums up Biden’s turgid, angry, rude, and adrenaline-rushed performance last night and America’s reaction, as personified by House Speaker Mike Johnson

I remember it being a lot about Vietnam.

I didn’t pay much attention to Richard Nixon’s speeches. As I became more politically active in college, I did pay attention to Jimmy Carter, especially as I graduated from college and became a journalist from an energy state (Oklahoma). Carter blamed energy companies for gas lines and shortages, just as Biden last night, again, blames greedy food companies for “shrinkflation” to divert from failed, inflationary policies.

Ronald Reagan’s SOTU speeches were the best and something we always looked forward to. Reagan’s speeches always exuded confidence and inspiration. They ended with optimism that America’s best days were ahead.

The best speaker of a generation, he introduced the concept of honoring guests in the US House’s gallery. Lenny Skutnik was the first. Skutnick, a low-level employee in the print shop of the Congressional Budget Office and a bystander, drove into the Potomac River’s icy waters to rescue a flailing woman after the icy-winged tail of Air Florida Flight 90 bounced off the 14th Street bridge shortly after takeoff during morning rush hour and landed in the river. He saved her life.

Lenny Skutnick and his wife stand, and First Lady Nancy Reagan applauds as President Reagan honors the bystander who saved a woman’s life after a DC plane crash weeks before.

Every president has used the concept of bringing guests every year, and now it includes Members of Congress. By tradition, the Secretary of the Senate hosts dinner for Senators, spouses, and guests before they gather in the Senate chamber to walk, double-file, across the Capitol to the House chamber. The Secretary leads them, and I led the way that February evening in 1996. Al Gore and Strom Thurmond, the Vice President and President Pro Tempore, respectively, were right behind.

The “Secretary’s Supper,” as it has long been called, is steeped in tradition, down to the chicken pot pie as the main buffet course. Now it features Senators and their “special guests,” many of whom have wonderful stories (others are invited for purely partisan purposes), but it’s gotten out of control. Each Senator gets a ticket to share with a guest in the House gallery.

One very sad note: a Gold Star father yelled from the gallery in disgust. “Abbey Gate!” Steve Nikoui yelled down at the president. “Second Battalion, First Marines!” reported the New York Post. He was arrested.

Afghanistan, Biden’s worst blunder of his administration in which 13 Marines and soldiers died, went unmentioned during his speech. At least he went off script to mention Lakin Riley, the young woman brutally murdered by an illegal alien authorities refused to turn over for deporting.

While Clinton’s speeches were always too long—they all are these days, and last night’s was no different—give him credit for one thing. In January 1994, the House’s teleprompter froze as Clinton began his speech. While he had written the text in front of him, he delivered the open paragraphs from memory. Very impressive. No one knew the teleprompter had stopped working until much later.

But we have a new award winner for the worst State of the Union speech in modern American history, and it’s not close: Joe Biden’s 2024 address, which hopefully will be his last. It wasn’t just disrespectful to his audience, Congress and, by extension, the American people. It was rude.

I remember the squint, the angry face, and the rapid-fire delivery that bears no resemblance to Biden's speeches during his Senate days. Twitter/X was full of questions about what kind of adrenaline-rushing drugs he was administered. More than a few suggested cocaine. I don’t believe that, but Ritalin and Adderall don’t engender that response. Amphetamines calm and focus, at least for those with ADHD. You could say he was focused, but that was hardly a “calm” delivery.

First, he arrived abnormally late - the speech didn’t start until almost 9:30 p.m. It was immediately partisan and angrily delivered. His squinting, tense face was distracting. It was less a “State of the Union” speech than a political one designed to energize the base. He attacked the Supreme Court and, belying doctrines of his Catholic faith, raged about abortion, promising to make Roe v. Wade the law of the land. The court, as it almost always does, sat silent and stone-faced. Radio talker Erick Erickson:

Last night, Americans witnessed an angry old man hopped up on drugs yelling at them. Yes, let’s not beat around the bush, Biden had something in his system to keep him going that late after bedtime. And it worked. He did not become the Human Roomba on stage for everyone to see. That, of course, raises the question of why he’s not like that every day. Drugs. I’m telling you that whether it was a B-12 shot, caffeine, or Hunter’s cocaine, there was more than just Joe the stamina sex machine.

Oh, sure, the clapping seals on the Democratic side were all excited and approving. This is the Joe Biden they’ve been waiting for! It reminded me of a line from a book by George Stephapolous, the former Clinton Administration communicator, Democratic partisan, and ABC faux journalist, as told by the Washington Examiner’s Byron York. York was referencing former US Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-FL) and his rant earlier this week about how strong Joe Biden was on the lowly-rated MSNBC’s “Morning Joe:”

Biden is now what stands between the nation and another Trump presidency. So to play armchair psychiatrist: They feel a deep need to believe in Biden, to suppress doubts about Biden, and to declare that he is not only not weak but strong, strong, strong.

Another partisan who went into television, George Stephanopoulos, described the process in a memoir of his time as a top campaign and White House aide to President Bill Clinton. In that memoir, All Too Human, Stephanopoulos related the experience in the 1992 campaign when a woman, Gennifer Flowers, claimed she had had an affair with Clinton. Clinton denied it. (It was in fact true.) When Flowers produced a tape of Clinton talking with her on the phone, Stephanopoulos instantly decided it was fake. (It was in fact genuine.) Stephanopoulos became a Clinton attack dog against any and all suggestion that the presidential candidate had had an affair with Flowers.

Later, when he learned that Clinton had been lying, Stephanopoulos asked himself why he believed so deeply in Clinton’s lie. In All Too Human, he got pretty philosophical about it, and described it this way:

A dynamic had already started that would repeat itself many times in the years ahead — one explained well by Reinhold Niebuhr: “Frantic orthodoxy,” he wrote, “is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are not sure that we are doubly sure.” I now had doubts about Clinton, had seen his flaws up close, which caused me to focus even more intently on his strengths and believe even more fervently in his ideas. … I didn’t want our enemies to win. They’d stop at nothing to defeat him, so nothing would stop me from defending him. Now I was a true true believer.

Democrats who praised Biden’s awful performance last are now guilty of what Stephanopolous was when he attacked Gennifer Flowers. They are “true true believers,” not unlike the late philosopher Eric Hoffer, who described them in his book on the nature of mass movements. It remains a must-read. Especially now. Hoffer nails the explanation for the total delusion of media and congressional partisans towards Biden’s Alice-in-Wonderland speech.

“Propaganda ... serves more to justify ourselves than to convince others; and the more reason we have to feel guilty, the more fervent our propaganda.”

“It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.”
― Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

One wonders how Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, or John F. Kennedy would have reacted. I suspect they would glance at each other, shake their heads, and wonder why Joe Biden is yelling at them and why congressional Democrats approve of this behavior. I think they would know.