China balloon and polls scramble script for Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech

Joe Biden is optimistic, but brutal polls and the nation’s collective freak-out over a mysterious ­Chinese balloon will overshadow his State of the Union speech.

US President Joe Biden arrives back at the White House on Monday after a weekend at Camp David, Maryland. Picture: AFP

Joe Biden is optimistic, but brutal polls and the nation’s collective freak-out over a mysterious ­Chinese balloon will overshadow his State of the Union speech on Wednesday AEDT.

His speechwriters had their work cut out on the weekend as they huddled with the President at the Camp David retreat in the rural hills of Maryland, before flying back to the White House on Monday.

A photo posted by Biden on Twitter showed a binder with the speech, a coffee mug and biscuits. “Getting ready,” he said.

But the dramatic downing of a huge Chinese balloon by a US Air Force fighter on Saturday left the dangerously unstable relationship with the communist superpower literally looming over the Biden administration.

And, as two polls published over the past two days show, well under half of Democrats want 80-year-old Biden to seek a second term in 2024.

In other words, his personal sunniness, embodied by a constant refrain of never having “been more optimistic” about the country, is simply not penetrating.

Just last week, the script for the address to a joint session of congress, nearly the entire senior ranks of the government, and a vast television audience, had ­ almost writing itself.

Inflation, which just a few months ago seemed a near existential threat to the Biden presidency, is steadily ticking downward. Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars are starting to flow out into programs passed under Biden to spur hi-tech manufacturing and repair infrastructure.

Then on Friday, new figures showed that a surge in job creation has driven unemployment to its lowest rate in 50 years.

In his own mini-preview of the so-called SOTU speech, Biden said: “Next week, I’ll be reporting on the state of the union. But today, I’m happy to report that the state of the union and the state of our economy is strong.”

Even if Biden has yet to formally announce his 2024 candidacy, the SOTU – followed by two very campaign-like trips over the next two days to Wisconsin and Florida – is expected to give him a big shove in that direction.

The question now is whether at his age, with an unenthusiastic party, ferociously aggressive Republican opponents, and increasingly Cold War-like confrontations with Russia and China, Biden can push hard enough.

On his side will be massive ­advantages: an economy defying multiple predictions of recession and the power of incumbency that means he can spend this year and the next travelling on Air Force One to tout his successes. But the weekend’s news showed what he is up against, even before taking on whomever the Republicans choose as their candidate – ­ Donald Trump or someone new.

The fighter jet ordered into the sky by Biden efficiently dispatched the Chinese balloon, but the White House faces swirling questions over why the craft – which China claims was studying weather – was first allowed to trace a leisurely path across the entire country, passing directly over ultra-sensitive military bases.

And polls show a very down-to-earth danger for Biden: his own side doesn’t seem to want him anymore.

In an AP-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research poll, a paltry 37 per cent of respondents said it backed Biden running for a second term, which would end when he was 86.

In an ABC News-Washington Post Poll 58 per cent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said the party should find someone else for 2024.

Pressed about the disconnect between Biden’s message, the macroeconomic data, and the ­apparent widespread dissatisfaction among average Americans, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre acknowledged that many voters remained worried about economic insecurity.

“It’s an incredibly complicated time,” she said, adding that the State of the Union would be an “important moment” in the battle to change Americans’ views.

“I think (at) the State of the Union he’ll have an opportunity to talk directly to the American ­people, not just congress, to talk about what we have done.”

AFP