Republican members of Congress repeatedly heckled President Biden, who was happy to mix it up with them.
Few leaders have so visibly enjoyed being president as Joe Biden. That might explain why he took so long getting down the aisle of the House chamber tonight, shaking hands and taking selfies. When he finally made it to the dais, he soaked up the applause and then grinned. “Good evening! If I were smart, I’d go home now,” he said.
The joke acknowledged the stakes of the evening’s State of the Union address. Conventional wisdom held that Biden had little to gain—the speeches rarely give presidents much boost—but much to lose if he seemed lost, old, or incoherent. But Biden delivered an energetic and pugnacious speech, one of the strongest of his career.
“In my career I’ve been told I’m too young and I’m too old,” Biden said to laughter. “Whether young or old, I’ve always known what endures, our North Star: The very idea of America, that we are all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives. We’ve never fully lived up to that idea, but we’ve never walked away from it either. And I won’t walk away from it now.”
At times, it was less a speech than a conversation. Republican members of Congress repeatedly heckled Biden, who was happy to mix it up with them. In one colloquy, the president attacked GOP tax policies as a handout to corporations and the wealthy, eliciting jeers. “You’re saying no. Look at the facts,” Biden smirked. “I know you know how to read.” Biden also engineered a predictable but successful trap by praising a bipartisan border-security bill that Republicans killed at Donald Trump’s behest. When Republicans booed, Biden broke out into a broad, Cheshire-cat smile. “Oh, you don’t like that bill?” he said. “I’ll be darned.”
The exchanges were a gift to Biden, whose aides had hinted he wanted to talk back to hecklers, just as he did last year. They see these moments as opportunities for Biden to prove he’s fast on his feet and not the senile shell whom some of his critics say he is.
