The State of Our Union is *Garbled Mumbling*: What Will Biden Say in His Big Speech to Congress?

State of the Union speeches have been an integral set piece of American political theater for more than a century, with President Woodrow Wilson reestablishing the tradition of annual addresses to Congress in 1913 after a hiatus of more than 100 years arranged by President Thomas Jefferson, who felt them to be too similar to Britain’s royal throne speeches. George Washington gave the very first State of the Union (SOTU) address in January 1790, one year after his election.

In the 20th century, the advent of telecommunications technologies such as radio and television heightened the speeches’ importance (last year’s SOTU got 38 million live TV viewers), with presidents able to use the addresses not only to speak to lawmakers and the press, but directly to the public. Congress, meanwhile, gets the chance to either express solidarity with the head of state (especially in times of national crisis, real or manufactured, or during a war), or critique the president in subtle ways, by failing to stand and clap as the president trumps his achievements, or ripping up his speech, as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did to Donald Trump’s SOTU speech in 2020, for example.

President Biden broke with a tradition going back to the 1930s of giving the SOTU speech in January or February in his 2021 address, delaying it until April over pretexts ranging from COVID and the Olympics to the January 6 riot at the Capitol complex by angry Trump supporters (and a sprinkling of suspected FBI agent provocateurs for good measure). Biden’s 2021 speech focused on the pandemic, jobs, his administration’s ambitious multi-trillion dollar spending agenda, and America’s twilight struggle against China and other countries “to win the 21st century” and “develop and dominate the products and technologies of the future,” like “advanced batteries, biotechnology, computer chips, [and] clean energy.” The speech also focused on the then-imminent US withdrawal from what Biden described as the “forever war in Afghanistan,” plus alleged “threats to the United States” from terrorists in the Middle East and Africa.

The following year’s speech, which Biden gave on March 1, 2022, focused on Ukraine, which was mentioned 27 times, and America’s “unwavering resolve” to see “freedom…always triumph over tyranny” (i.e. Russia and Putin, which were mentioned 37 times total). China received only an honorable mention in 2022, with Biden boasting that he had told Chinese President Xi Jinping that “it’s never been a good bet to bet against the American people,” and calling for more investments to assure that money was spent on research and development to “win the economic competition of the 21st century” against the Asian giant.

In the Ukraine portion of his speech, which totaled over 11 minutes out of the hour-long address, Biden boasted that Russia and Putin were more “isolated from the world” than ever before, that the Russian economy and ruble were on the brink of ruin, and that the Russian president had “no idea what’s coming” as far as future sanctions were concerned. Touting the unity and resolve of the “freedom-loving nations” of the world against Russia, Biden also pointed to billions of dollars in military, economic, and humanitarian support committed to Kiev “in their fight for freedom.”

Other issues took a back seat in 2022, and included infrastructure, vaccinations, economic relief in the face of rocketing inflation, energy price hikes and problems with the global supply chain, climate and green energy commitments, and military justice reform and the $2 trillion American Rescue Plan COVID stimulus package, which Biden assured had “helped working people and left no one behind.”

Tellingly, neither speech mentioned America’s deep-seated problems, like the $31.5 trillion national debt and the deadly opiates crisis (which claimed the lives of over 200,000 Americans between 2021 and 2022). The migrant crisis at the southern border also received only a passing mention, with Biden noting the installation of “cutting-edge” technologies at the frontier in 2022, and the need to “get at the root problem of why people are fleeing” from the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador in the 2021 address.

A lot has happened since last year’s SOTU address. Republicans won control over the House of Representatives in the November 2022 midterm elections, leaving Congress divided, and packed with a cohort of about two dozen zealous anti-Biden, anti-neocon MAGA Republicans.

America’s energy and inflation crises have worsened, with the United States either already in a recession or on the brink of one. US aid to Ukraine has now topped $100 billion, with no end in sight in the crisis, which Moscow now characterizes as a Russia-NATO proxy war. Meanwhile, the promised apocalypse for the Russian economy never came, with Russia’s 2022 GDP shrinking by 3.7 percent, and projected by the IMF to resume growth in 2023.

At home, Biden is facing growing scrutiny from pesky lawmakers and Justice Department officials over his son Hunter’s laptop – which features damning information pointing to potentially illegal pay-to-play activities involving foreign actors, plus a separate scandal related to Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents – which a special prosecutor has been appointed to investigate.

Biden’s proxies expect Tuesday’s address to focus again on Ukraine, the economy, and public safety – with the latter issue highlighted last month after the Memphis police murder of 29-year-old African American Tyre Nichols on during a routine traffic stop.

“Inflation is still with us. We have a supply chain problem because of autocratic governments around the world, we have an energy - concern on inflation due to the war in Ukraine,” Biden ally and Maryland Democrat Senator Ben Cardin said in a recent interview with Beltway media when asked to highlight problems the administration is concerned about.

“Middle income families are hurting. So the president needs to acknowledge that we have concerns that have to be met. Middle income families are having problems affording health care, affording housing…and then we saw the systemic challenges we have in law enforcement with Tyre Nichols. The president needs to acknowledge that we still have a way to go to make sure that we deal with the concerns of inflation, as well as the concerns of public safety and confidence in our communities,” Cardin said.

Nichols’ family, it’s worth noting, has been formally invited to attend the SOTU as guests of the Congressional Black Caucus, meaning issues like police reform and police brutality, and gun violence and gun control, are almost certainly going to be brought up by Biden.

Some pundits also broadly expect Biden to use the speech to “paint the broad strokes” of a possible run for a second term in office in 2024 (a prospect many Republicans welcome, but which Democrats have privately grumbled about due to the president’s noticeable mental decline, legal troubles, and dismal approval ratings). Accordingly, Biden may spend quite some time touting his achievements, despite advice to the contrary by some aides, including infrastructure spending and the so-called Inflation Reduction Act passed last year.

As for Ukraine, amid growing public weariness of Washington’s aid (with 26 percent of Americans now saying the US is giving "too much" assistance – up from 7 percent in March 2022), Biden will likely repeat mantras and epithets about US support for “freedom and democracy” for “as long as it takes,” and may attack detractors for failing to understand what’s supposedly at stake.

Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, has already confirmed her plans to attend Biden’s speech, and who knows – perhaps even some kind of "virtual attendance" can be arranged for President Volodymyr Zelensky, who saturated the US media landscape and attended the Grammys, the Golden Globes, cryptocurrency conferences, and other celebrity and business events throughout 2022.

China is also expected to feature more prominently in Tuesday’s SOTU address, given last week’s Benny Hill-esque hysteria over an errant Chinese weather balloon which the Pentagon claims was a spy balloon.

Taiwan, another issue the administration has focused on throughout Biden’s first two years in office, may also get a mention, again in the context of saving "freedom and democracy" against Chinese "tyranny and totalitarianism."

The national debt may be an issue that Biden can’t get away from this year, especially as Republicans continue to hold up the automatic rise of the debt ceiling, threatening to shut down the government if spending is not brought under control. Biden could accuse Republicans of "holding the economy hostage" by refusing to automatically pay the bills without assurances of cuts in future spending. Biden is expected to roll out his budget plan on March 9.

Ultimately, Biden’s supporters and sympathetic media hope that SOTU 2023 will provide the president with an opportunity to achieve a “fresh start” in a “new era of divided government,” a chance to promote bipartisan unity in hard times.

Whether or not personal pride and a desire to play one-upmanship with his GOP colleagues get the better of him is yet to be seen, especially given the challenge posed by the new breed of MAGA Republicans, who have not shied away from criticizing and even heckling the president, including during last year’s SOTU address.