Biden’s State of the Union Was Too Much Business as Usual
The president, his party and the country all need a new direction. But Tuesday's address to the nation was mostly status quo.
Better luck next year.
Photographer: Saul Loeb/AFP/Bloomberg
President Joe Biden’s most crucial task in his State of the Union address was to start bringing a deeply divided country back together. This would have been true even if Russia’s appalling assault on Ukraine hadn’t happened — but Vladimir Putin’s reckless gamble makes repairing U.S. politics more vital than before. A divided America is a weaker America, less able to secure its own interests and impaired as the leader of the free world, which the free world still needs it to be.
The president rightly put Ukraine at the top of his speech. He was warmly applauded by Republicans as well as Democrats for his expressions of solidarity with the victims of Putin’s war. Opponents as well as supporters give him credit for guiding an energized alliance toward a much more robust response to Russia’s aggression than Putin, for one, ever expected.