Cohen: State of the Union launches Biden's 2024 campaign

WASHINGTON — Before Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address, Politico reported that the U.S. president “begins with an especially weak position in the polls.” Only three other presidents of the post-war era had lower popularity midway through their terms. Two were subsequently defeated.

The pundits obsess over Biden’s popularity, which has not cracked 50 per cent since the summer of 2021. How can you win, they ask, if most Americans oppose you? How can you run if most Americans, even most Democrats, doubt you?

Surely this would be enough to drive any octogenarian into retirement. But understand that all this — his age, his polls, his skeptics — doesn’t faze Biden

He has had nine lives. He won a seat in the Senate, given no chance of winning, at 29. He lost his wife and his daughter in an automobile accident. He was accused of plagiarism and hyperbole. He ran for president three times.

In early 2020, he was given up for dead, politically. He lost badly in Iowa and New Hampshire. He fled to South Carolina, which saved him, cleared the field, and he sailed to the nomination.

In the first year of Biden’s presidency, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan went badly and his agenda stalled in Congress. A failure, the Harpies declared. Then Congress began passing laws: building infrastructure, making computer chips at home, providing COVID-19 relief, attacking climate change, restricting guns.

While the Democrats lost the House in November, they saved the furniture. They held the Senate and increased the tally of governorships and statehouses. They avoided the usual losses of the president’s party. In defeat, Biden looked like a winner.

Which brings us to the State of the Union, which was really about the State of Joe Biden. If the Union is strong, so is he.

Of course, he shouldn’t run again, and his wife, Jill, shouldn’t let him. But after this speech, the best of his presidency, he seems unable to help himself.

Stutter and stammer as he did — Democrats inhaled sharply when he went off script and fell flat — Biden delivered a boffo performance. He was feisty, funny and confident, flashing a megawatt smile while goading the Republicans — led by the fur-swathed diva in white, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who shouted “liar.” She was his most useful idiot and enthusiastic prop in this memorable piece of American political theatre, in which he, not they, starred.

Beyond the statutory laundry list of things he wants and won’t get, there were moments of incredulity, empathy and levity. A crowd-pleaser were “junk fees” imposed by banks, airlines and others.

“These fees can cost you up to $90 a night at hotels that aren’t even resorts,” he lamented, dripping with disgust, as if this were the greatest threat to the nation since the Zimmermann Telegram. It seemed absurd, designed to show that the commander-in-chief understands what really bothers Americans.

By turns, Biden was scornful and boastful, recycling old favourites (“Never bet against America”). He channelled Hubert Humphrey as happy warrior and Franklin Roosevelt as class warrior (“They are unanimous in their hatred for me — and I welcome their hatred,” Roosevelt roared).

Now Biden is the new populist: the prosecutor of big oil and big pharma, pursuer of tax cheats, enemy of rapacious faux resorts.

Buy American! Beat cancer! Defeat Putin! Stop the nickel and diming! Kevin McCarthy sat in the speaker’s chair as stiff as a lawn ornament, wincing at his fellow Republicans.

Biden taunted and mocked them with his avalanche of exhortations: Here’s the deal. Americans are being played for suckers. Workers are getting stiffed. Let’s finish the job. We’re not bystanders.

Oh, yes, we know, we know. Too old, too weak, too out of touch. Yet there Biden was in the well of Congress, like an old firedog in the night, answering the bell, once again.

And there he was in the game, eager for the campaign, rehearsing for the last and greatest role of his endless career: the making of the president, 2024.

Andrew Cohen is a journalist, a professor at Carleton University and author of Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours That Made History.