President Biden's State of the Union Address

President Joe Biden delivered the annual State of the Union address on Tuesday evening. I'm not sure I've ever watched a SOTU live before. Usually I figure I'll just read the highlights the next morning. This time I decided to stream it on my laptop computer while I was cooking and eating dinner.

Overall the president's message was upbeat. He hit three themes repeatedly: 1) We're actually doing reasonably well, all things considered. 2) But there are still clear problems we need to fix— so "Let's finish the job." And 3) For all the gnashing of teeth about a politically divided country we actually can get things done, and have gotten things done, bilaterally.

There were a few times the president slipped on his words. That's unfortunate because the right will pounce on them as indicative of some secret agenda accidentally revealed. The truth is far simpler: Joe Biden has suffered a stuttering problem since childhood. Him tripping on words occasionally is not a sign that he's stupid, uninformed, or lying. It's a condition he was born with, one that's shared by an estimated 3 million Americans.

The highlight of the speech was when Biden went "off script" to respond to hecklers. He accused Republicans of proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Many shouted "Liar!" and other things arguing that wasn't true. Biden insisted he has the receipts. I agree; I saw the proposals from a few GOP members in Congress in the news a few weeks ago, too. But rather than just leave the interruption at "No we didn't/Yes you did" Biden engaged in a bit of real-time deal making. "So we're agreeing that Social Security is off the books?" he prompted. (This was a minor word slip; the proper colloquial phrase was off the table.)

This was a great bit of extemporaneous speaking. The president took an interruption, meant by his opponents to subtract from his speech, and turned the tables to make it an added win in his column. It's doubly nice because Biden's opponents like to paint him as old, doddering, and incapable. Here Biden displayed a benefit of his age and experience.

Decades ago politicians engaged in actual debate when speaking. There's still debate today, but it's more commonly an exchange of one-sided salvos, buttressed by teleprompters and made-for-TV sets. Biden's been in politics for decades. He drew on his old-school experience to engage critics in meaningful repartee.

As a technical matter, technical in the sense of public speaking skills, Biden demonstrated a critical point about preparing for a speech. You don't memorize your speech, you internalize your speech. The difference is when you memorize it, if something interrupts you you may lose your place and stumble. You go off script and it's bad. When you internalize your speech, interruptions don't faze you so bad. You can extemporize. And if you're really good, you can flip the tables on people interrupting you and trying to play "Gotcha!"

Update: More extra-curricular activities from the SOTU: Mitt Romney rebukes George Santos for his lying ways.

Romney Confronts Liar Santos before Biden's Speech

In my previous blog I wrote about President Joe Biden's recent State of the Union address. That blog covered the main thrust of his speech. There were also a number of... extracurricular activities... before, during, and after the speech that are worth mentioning. One, of course, was the Republican heckling during Biden's speech— and Biden's deft response to it. He turned the table against the dishonest attention-seekers who thought they'd seize a headline for themselves, revealing them for the bullshit artists they are and shaming them into disavowing a political agenda item put forth by some of their colleagues. But that's not all that's worth talking about.

Before Biden spoke, as he had just entered the room in fact, there was a verbal altercation between GOP Sen. Mitt Romney and GOP Rep. George Santos. Romney rebuked serial liar George Santos, who has lied about virtually everything in his background to get elected, for rushing the aisle to shake hands with everyone, including President Biden.

Here's a news piece including an interview with Romney about what he said:

Watch on YouTube

Two lines from Romney stuck with me:

"Given the fact he's under ethics investigation he should be sitting in the back row and staying quiet instead of parading in front of the president"

Finally! A Republican who says unambiguously that Santos's lying ways are not okay. Romney added moments later that Santos should resign or be expelled.

"Embellishing is saying you got an A when you got an A-. Lying is saying you graduated from a college you didn't even attend."

Here Romney's rebuking the other 99.9% of Republican politicians and spin doctors who consistently try to minimize Santos's lies as normal and inconsequential. His remarks on "embellishing" are virtually the same as what I wrote 4 weeks ago.