Biden’s Coming Potemkin State of the Union Speech

AMAC Exclusive – By Shane Harris

After an unusually long delay, President Joe Biden is scheduled to give his first State of the Union Address on March 1. The White House is desperate to use the speech as the fulcrum of a last-ditch effort to overturn the hardening narrative of the Biden administration as failed presidency leading a Democrat Party that is doomed to lose its Congressional majorities in November’s midterm elections. But succeeding in the biggest political speech of the year will be no easy task for the beleaguered president. Having fallen short on his major campaign promises and with a slew of crises now gripping the nation, Biden has little choice but to try and convince the American people that things are actually going quite well – in spite of the abundant evidence that they are not. Just as he did last August when he declared the disastrous withdraw from Afghanistan an “extraordinary success,” President Biden will be asking Americans to believe the unbelievable.

In the Soviet Union, government minders used to dupe foreigners with tours of seemingly thriving communities, when in fact the ordinary citizens living there were struggling. In much the same way, it looks as if Joe Biden is gearing up to take the American people on a rhetorical tour of a country that does not really exist. Get ready. You can see Joe Biden’s Potemkin State of the Union coming a mile away.

Over the past several weeks, Biden’s team, along with Congressional Democrats and the mainstream media, have slowly started laying the groundwork for Biden to try and flip the script on his catastrophic record of failure.

Recognizing that Biden has utterly failed to “shut down the virus,” the White House and other elected Democrats are now setting Biden up to try and claim a phony “victory” over COVID-19. Democratic governors and other elected officials have started this effort, slowly easing restrictions just in time for Biden to take the stage next month. The White House then signaled last week that it intends to sharply “pivot” on its own pandemic messaging, an apparent attempt to create the illusion that the administration is making progress on the virus.

Even the late date of the State of the Union, March 1, (when the speech normally occurs in January or early February), appears chosen with the expectation that by then, the latest COVID wave will be well past its peak, giving the false appearance that the sharp decline is a result of Biden’s pandemic policies. 

Unfortunately for Biden, any claim of success in handling the virus has already been dramatically hampered by Speaker Pelosi’s recent announcement that attendance will be capped at 25 members from each party due to COVID-19. That would mean even fewer members will be in the chamber this year than during Biden’s Address to a Joint Session of Congress last year – a visual reminder that President Biden’s pandemic response has set the country back, not forward, during his time in office.  

Biden will also likely claim that he has achieved success on the economy, a hard sell given that soaring inflation is devouring the paychecks of ordinary Americans and grocery store shelves have gone bare in many parts of the country. Biden did receive one major boost to his economic argument last week, as job growth rose far more than expected in January. However, one solid jobs report won’t erase the fact that job growth fell well beneath expectations in all of 2021.

Moreover, Americans understand that Biden came into office with the country still struggling under pandemic-induced economic shutdowns. So, while his claim that the country created “more jobs under me than under any first-term administration in history” may be technically true, that fact comes with the huge caveat that the country also had far more jobs to fill than at any other time in history after the government forcibly shut them down.

In another effort to distract from the reality of his failed tenure, the Biden foreign policy team appears to have been busy building up the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, which many independent experts have suggested has always been unlikely. Late last month, as Biden called a Russian incursion “imminent,” even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky scolded him for inciting “panic,” making clear that the White House was exaggerating the threat. Last week, the State Department was also unable to back up dramatic claims that Russia had planned a “false flag” operation as a pretext for invading Ukraine.

So don’t be surprised if Biden spends part of his State of the Union touting some supposed diplomatic achievement in avoiding a war that many have suggested may never come. As Americans will remember from last summer, candor about foreign policy threats is not this president’s strong suit. It was just last August when the Biden administration ordered a missile strike believing it had reliable intelligence about a target that was part of an imminent terror attack on the Kabul airport. General Milley said at the time that it was a “righteous strike,” but the intelligence later turned out to have been tragically wrong. The strike killed an innocent Afghan aid worker and his 7 children. Given this history, Americans would be forgiven if they were skeptical of Biden’s claims about Ukraine.

At the same time, even as Biden appears poised to boast about his commitment to protecting Ukraine’s border, he will not likely say a word about how he has utterly failed to protect the Southern border of his own country. More than two million people crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally last year (a figure that only reflects those who were caught) more than quadruple the number of illegal crossers in 2020.

Americans will also not look kindly on Biden touting supposed foreign policy achievements as he fails to even protect them in their own neighborhoods. Many once-safe streets in our cities have now been turned into virtual warzones as the country faces a record surge in crime. More police officers were killed in the line of duty in 2021 than any other year since 1995, and homicides in America’s major cities last year increased 44% over 2019, the most recent pre-pandemic year. Instead of talking about what the federal government can do to assist local police and prosecutors to enforce the law against criminals, expect Biden to advocate for more gun control laws and other measures to make it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to defend themselves. 

Aside from the lack of any real achievements, Biden may also find himself unable to inspire anyone when he takes the podium in a few weeks. Biden often struggles to make it through even shorter remarks, and has yet to deliver a truly solid performance in a major address. As Politico’s John Harris – normally a friend of the Biden administration – recently wrote: “Do you recall Biden’s address a few months ago to the United Nations? No, you don’t, because it was a compound of gassy banalities, organized around a string of rhetorical questions that recalled a high school valedictorian’s speech.” Ouch.

Even if Biden can manage to turn in a passable performance, it will likely do nothing to save the sinking ship of his political fortunes. Particularly in an election year, Congress sets the legislative agenda in January and February – when Presidents normally give the State of the Union – as most members will be checked out by midsummer to focus on their reelection campaigns. In perhaps the most damming sign yet of Democrats’ lack of confidence in Biden, Congress appears to have already moved on, and Biden may likely have missed his chance to salvage some semblance of his domestic agenda – and perhaps his legacy.