Al Pacino, in the film version of Glengarry Glen Ross, sat in a bar and said, “Our life is looking forward or looking back. That’s it. Where is the moment?“
Good philosophical advice. We can’t alter the past and we can’t see the future, so we should maximize the present moment. Live in it. Draw satisfaction from it. Savor it.
That’s what I did last night during Joe Biden’s State of the Union gig. I have no clue – and neither do you – whether his spirited SOTU will boost his polls, propel him toward a second term, and save us from the rapist insurrectionist deadbeat. But here’s what I do know, having just seen and heard Joe in the here and now:
If I am fortunate enough to make it to age 81, please may I have his marbles.
Yeah, he flubbed a few sentences (as he has done ever since his stuttering childhood). But this guy has more fire than a Game of Thrones dragon. The whining Dems who’ve kept wringing their hands about him being Too Old should zip their flapping yaps – it’s long past time – and get to work on getting him reelected. The mainstream media should cancel whatever Too Old stories they’re working on and focus instead on this fundamental fact:
He can talk governance and policy in complete sentences – corporate taxes, health care, rents, insulin, preschool education, computer chips, IVF and abortion, you name it. Veteran Republican strategist Mike Murphy got it right last night when he tweeted, “I see a brain working at 100 percent.” Indeed, if your top source of info these last few weeks has been The New York Times, with its Too Old cacophony, you likely didn’t recognize the masterful dude at the podium.
The MAGAts and their fellow travelers were reduced to carping that Biden was too aggressive, too stoked up, too angry, yelling too much. But hang on a sec. Haven’t they been saying since forever that Biden is so demented and enfeebled that he barely knows he’s alive?
Optics matter. Biden’s first task last night – aside from hosing down fretting Dems – was to reassure independent swing voters that he has the requisite energy and articulation to do the job. Did he plant seeds of success for November? Who knows. Tens of millions of Americans simply don’t pay attention. But in that urgent moment last night, with arguably the largest audience he’ll get all year, he sounded a lot more substantive than the incoherent lummox who thinks that wind farms kill whales.
Biden sought to woo those swing voters – and Nikki Haley Republican voters – with substance. He drew a stark (and accurate) contrast: He believes in governance and democratic values; Trump and his MAGAts, especially his toadies in the House, believe in sabotaging governance and democracy. He is strong, they are weak. Biden blasted them at the opening bell for “bowing down” to Vladimir Putin and abetting the Capitol insurrection: “The threat to democracy must be defended. My predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth about Jan. 6. I will not do that. This is a moment to speak the truth and to bury the lies. Here’s the simple truth. You can’t love your country only when you win.”
At one point, he confronted the Too Old bullshit head on and gave it a savvy twist: “When you get to my age, certain things become clearer than ever before…My lifetime has taught me to embrace freedom and democracy…Now, other people my age see it differently. The American story of resentment, revenge and retribution – that’s not me…The issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are, it’s how old are our ideas. Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are the oldest of ideas. But you can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back.”
Biden’s MAGA critics grumbled that Biden’s fiery SOTU was unpresidential, that it was too “political,” too “partisan.” That’s hilarious, coming from people who applauded Trump for bringing Rush Limbaugh to a SOTU and giving him the Medal of Freedom in the middle of the address. It’s an election year, everything is politicized, and since Trump is campaigning so hard to stay out of jail, Biden is fully entitled to talk policy in a campaign context. (If he’d shrunk from doing that, Dems and pundits would be whining: “Biden is too old to put up a fight!”)
Biden effectively fused policy and politics while talking about reproductive rights. He even called out the attending Supreme Court justices arrayed in front of him: “Look, in its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court majority wrote the following, and with all due respect, justices, ‘Women are not without electoral or political power.’ You’re about to realize just how much you got right about that. Clearly, clearly, those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women. But they found out when reproductive freedom was on the ballot. We won in 2022 and 2023″ – in the midterms, in special elections, in red state referenda – “and we will win again in 2024.”
Throughout his onslaught – and particularly when he called out the House GOP for killing the tough border security bill at Trump’s insistence – Speaker Mike Johnson, the lightweight MAGA puppet, sat there looking like a guy undergoing a colonoscopy without the benefit of anesthesia. It must’ve been tough for him, realizing there was an adult in the room. I was reminded of another Al Pacino line from Glengarry Glen Ross: “You child! Whoever told you that you could work with men!”
Biden clearly intends to channel Give ‘Em Hell Harry. In 1948, everyone assumed that President Truman would be toast on election day. The polls said it. The media said it. But Harry got his dander up and pounded away at the “do-nothing Congress.” I sense the same vibe now. As Luke Russert, son of Tim, tweeted last night, “Never doubt an Irish Catholic with a chip on their shoulder.”