“Vitality is, of course, front and center,” said Patrick Gaspard, a former Obama official who now heads the liberal think tank Center for American Progress. For as much effort goes into the content of the speech, he added, over the long run “people won’t remember what you say. But they’ll remember how you make them feel.”
The State of the Union may be one of the most vastly overrated speeches in all of politics. But not this year.
The address President Joe Biden is set to deliver on Thursday night will come as the president faces intensifying worries about his age and vitality and a host of confounding international crises and domestic challenges. That backdrop has dramatically heightened the stakes for the White House, with millions of viewers tuning in not just to hear the words he utters but how he physically delivers them.
The White House recognizes the significance. It’s planning to use the State of the Union to portray America as in the midst of a historic revival on Biden’s watch, driven by his administration’s efforts to strengthen the working class and build a thriving economy.
And it’s eager to use the address to cast the 2024 race as a critical choice between continuing to expand on that progress — or tumbling backwards under a Donald Trump presidency that would pose an existential threat to the nation’s democratic principles.
“It’s high stakes,” said Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at centrist Democratic think tank Third Way. “It’s a coin flip election, and this is the beginning of Biden making his case.”
