Joe Biden Reveals His Superpower: Acting Like a Pretty Normal Person
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Slate) State of the Union speeches tend to have a soporific cadence. Presidents and their writers, feeling pressure to make their achievements seem historically epic, layer on portentous and faux-inspiring rhetoric. Ironically, this ends up making the addresses especially forgettable.
Joe Bidens approach Tuesday was looser in many places, particularly during the first half of the evening. Take, for example , his amiably confrontational remarks about raising taxes on corporations and billionairesa great impression of a regular person talking about politics:
Biden, at age 80, does not deliver either prepared text or ad libs with the greatest precision. This text was, on the page, not particularly dynamic. It was his presence in the moment, ratherhis own interest in what he was saying and how his audience was receiving itthat was notable. He worked the crowd; he injected the word folks everywhere he could; he got mad and fired up. In what was largely a departure from the norm, he also played to the Republicans in attendance, goading them into peeved responses that he could then meet with a confident camaraderie:
Given factors like structural polarization, media fragmentation, and the overwhelming primacy of gasoline prices, none of this probably matters much. It will probably not affect Bidens approval ratings or ability to pass legislation in the House of Representatives.
But it made for a better speech. The presence of actual human energy in its early moments gave weight to the softer tone Biden took when he turned, in the second half of the night, to address matters of life and deathpolice brutality, foreign proxy war, and assault rifle massacres among them; you know, the modern-America subjects. This, in turn, contrasted with the patriotic verve of the evenings quintessentially Bidenian conclusion, the Last True Idealist material that he takes such visible pleasure in delivering. ..............(more)
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/02/biden-state-of-the-union-good-speech.html