Biden must keep selling impressive record in uphill battle to keep White House

Joe Biden must convince voters he can keep doing the world’s most powerful job until he is 86. In his second State of the Union, he made a good fist of that.

Joe Biden is the oldest president to give America’s State of the Union address.

So as much as what he said on Wednesday (AEDT) in the 70-minute speech was important, how the 80-year-old said it mattered even more for his political future.

Biden’s legislative record after two years in office – hundreds of billions of dollars for infrastructure upgrades, clean energy technologies and domestic manufacturing, plus tougher gun rules, cheaper medicines and same sex marriage protections – is impressive.

But poll after poll shows an overwhelming majority of Americans believe their country is headed in the wrong direction, and even most Democrats do not want Biden to seek a second term in next year’s presidential election.

US President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the US Capitol in Washington, DC. Picture: Jacquelyn Martin/Pool/AFP

That means his mission over the next two years is to sell those achievements while convincing voters he can keep doing the world’s most powerful job until he is 86.

In his second State of the Union, Biden made a good fist of that. He was engaged and energetic, especially when he sparred with Republicans on protecting Medicare and social security payments.

Biden also seized on the political theatre of the prime-time speech, weaving in the stories of a hero who took down a gunman and the parents of a black man killed by police. (There was sensibly no mention of U2’s Bono, who was also invited to sit with the President’s wife.)

For an international audience, however, Biden’s long list of family-friendly promises left him light on when it came to foreign policy.

He took a stern but insubstantial line on China, and then went off-script for the speech’s most bizarre moment in which he yelled: “Name me a world leader who would change places with Xi Jinping.”

Huh? Then again, if that was Biden’s biggest misstep, it wasn’t a bad night for him after all.

Originally published as Biden must keep selling impressive record in uphill battle to keep White House