How Biden should do SOTU
The subtitled president
President Biden gets to speak to the nation tonight. The State of the Union speech tends to be a long affair; since 1964, the shortest speeches were given by Richard Nixon (average 35 minutes), and the longest by Donald J. Trump (average 1 hour, 20 minutes). Joe Biden, so far, has gone just over an hour.
Now, we all know that Biden’s got a problem speaking for long periods of time. Even with the benefit of a teleprompter, Biden tends to wander off into gibberish, missed cues, uncoordinated anger or emotion, mispronounced names, or just plain losing his place in the text. In an hour, an 81-year-old man has a lot of opportunity to show his age. Tonight, the messenger is more important than the message, and everyone knows it.
In the mornings, my brother Jay and I generally spend time knocking around ideas and discussing whatever is on our minds. He keeps going back to an idea of how Biden should speak to the nation. I don’t want to take any credit for this: it’s totally Jay. I am even giving him co-writer credit this morning. I’m just being the stenographer here.
Here’s the idea. Biden has given brief pressers in front of whirling helicopter blades and screaming turbine engines. It’s great. Nobody can hear him over the din, but convenient captions carry the message, as Biden’s aides already know what they prepared for him to say. It doesn’t really matter what is coming out of Biden’s mouth, the message is on the screen.
So, tonight, the president should enter the House chamber, proceed to the dais, and have his microphone unplugged. It would be even better if he loaded the front of the chamber with some college or high school orchestras, who would play during the speech. Have a few kids, teachers, and others (as has been the custom since Reagan) invited as guests, but instead of simply standing, they should come down and say a few words.
President Biden can speak, without power to the microphone, while the band plays, and his speech can be displayed using captions. It won’t matter whatever comes out of his mouth—he’s talking—saying something. But the message is the speech, not the messenger, because nobody can really hear or understand what Biden is saying.
Ideally, Biden should choose to do what presidents since Thomas Jefferson in 1801 did until Woodrow Wilson ruined it in 1913: send his message to Congress in writing, and avoid the whole speech in toto. But media doesn’t allow that in the modern era, plus it would be seen as prima facie evidence of Biden’s incapacity (that’s me, not Jay saying it).
Tonight, Joe Biden likely has a good speech prepared. He won’t say much that will lose him massive numbers of voters (“he loses ten votes a day”—Jay). But the fact that he has to say it, and be understood while saying it, and everyone will be clicking through their personal gaffe-counters, is a liability. Biden is best served by communicating without really being heard—like the trombone-voices in a Charlie Brown cartoon. Wah-wah-wah-WAH-wah-wah, and the sentence appears on the closed-captioning. The subtitled president is the best approach.
I hope someone in the Biden White House is listening. There’s still time to get that band to the Capitol.
Interesting take and one of the rare times i have had any interest in a State of the Union address. To be clear, we already know Joe will stumble, it's been baked into his DNA. We can argue whether it's due to his stuttering, his age or just because he is a devil worshiping, child eating democrat (curious take for a long-practicing Catholic of pretty unshakable faith, but what the heck, whatever narrative works).
As a long standing student of Hubert Humphrey speeches, i admired not so much his ability to be perfect in presentation, but more so in his ability to tell a story. He drew you in and while he rambled on, his message often resonated with those watching and listening. He wasn't afraid to shed a tear, tell a joke or make you jump from your chair in angst or joy. He wasn't eloquent, he was effectively human.
That's what i want from Joe tonight. This election is a battle ground for the ages. I'd argue good versus evil and there should be no mistake where the evil exists. The phony pretense of stolen elections, that January 6 was just another day on the Capital grounds and that those fake electors were just good governance explains where that evil lay. Let me be more blunt; in the end, bullshit is still bullshit no matter how many times you spew it.
Tonight should be the launching of a celebration of life as we know it. I know the conventional wisdom will be to attack trump; my preference is Joe never mention his name. He need to take the hour of prime time and make his case of the past three years of successes and the restoration of normality. Of a country digging out of a pandemic and in most cases, better than any other.
Sorry for all those worshiping at the alter of the donald, but there is no "Biden_crime family." Try as they may, Hunter was and is a troubled soul. His father on the other hand is a good and honorable man who has devoted his life to service to this country. His willingness to reach across the aisle is a throwback to the time when "statesmen" existed. Their goal was always driven by what's best for the country, not what's best for me personally...or worse yet...how do i stay out of jail?
My apologies for the length of my thoughts. I already know Joe will stumble and that's okay by me. By the end of the hour, i want and expect to hear why in spite of the rantings from the right, that what this country offers is worth fighting for. The next 8 months we will all be drowning in the chaos that follows trump, tonight i want to celebrate the freedom of living in a democracy where everyone matters, not just the cultists.
Gosh, I wish I was tech suasive enough to impose the mental picture of the two young lovers standing on the bow of the Titanic as it is going down as an example of how I think the SOTU will go tonight.