{"id":16672,"date":"2024-03-08T12:55:38","date_gmt":"2024-03-08T12:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/08\/did-biden-pass-or-fail-former-presidential-speechwriters-grade-the-state-of-the-union-address\/"},"modified":"2024-03-08T12:55:38","modified_gmt":"2024-03-08T12:55:38","slug":"did-biden-pass-or-fail-former-presidential-speechwriters-grade-the-state-of-the-union-address","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/08\/did-biden-pass-or-fail-former-presidential-speechwriters-grade-the-state-of-the-union-address\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Biden pass or fail? Former presidential speechwriters grade the State of the Union address"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saddled with negative approval ratings and trailing former President Trump in the latest polling average of their general election rematch, President Biden went for the jugular in prime time Thursday evening as he delivered the State of the Union address with eight months to go until the November showdown.<\/p>\n

Biden early and often took aim at Trump, whom he only referred to as \u2018his predecessor,\u2019 and also fired numerous salvos at Republican lawmakers sitting directly in front of him as the president delivered his address to a joint session of Congress.<\/p>\n

\u2018My predecessor, a former Republican President, tells Putin, \u2018Do whatever the hell you want,\u2019\u2019\u00a0Biden charged three minutes into his speech. It was the first of thirteen references to Trump, who this week became the GOP\u2019s presumptive nominee.<\/p>\n

While Democrats applauded the tone and tenor of the president\u2019s address, Republicans savaged the speech for crossing the line.<\/p>\n

\u2018This was the most partisan State of the Union I\u2019ve heard in my lifetime,\u2019 said Bill McGurn, who served as chief speechwriter for then-President George W. Bush.<\/p>\n

\u2018No outreach to Republicans, and the clear message was this: the era of big government is back, with a vengeance,\u2019 added McGurn, a Wall Street Journal editorial board member and columnist as well as a Fox News contributor.<\/p>\n

Marc Theissen, who also served as a speechwriter for Bush,\u00a0argued Biden\u2019s speech was an \u2018utter disgrace.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Attacking his opponent directly in the first minutes of his speech is unprecedented and perhaps the most partisan start to a State of the Union address in modern memory,\u2019 Theissen emphasized in a social media posting.<\/p>\n

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It was a very different take from Dan Cluchey, who served as a speechwriter for the president in the Biden White House.<\/p>\n

\u2018With energy and vigor, the President laid out the clear choice facing America \u2014 a choice between two starkly different visions for our future.\u00a0 Will we expand freedom, or restrict it?\u00a0 Will we defend democracy, or attack it?\u00a0 Will we continue to grow the economy for all, or rig it on behalf of billionaires and the wealthiest corporations?\u00a0 President Biden made it crystal clear where he stands \u2014 and he did it while commanding the room with equal parts sharp oratory, disarming banter, and matter-of-fact moral authority,\u2019 Cluchey told Fox News.<\/p>\n

And Cluchey argued that \u2018State of the Union addresses don\u2019t get better than this.\u2019<\/p>\n

Longtime Democratic consultant Maria Cardona told Fox News \u2018the contrast with\u00a0Trump was brilliant and scathing. He pulled no punches, told the truth, and he was everything he needed to be.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Of course, Republicans thought it was too political. If that\u2019s their only criticism, they know he had a homer, and they have nowhere else to go,\u2019 added Cardona, a Democratic National Committee member and veteran of multiple presidential campaigns.<\/p>\n

Cardona argued that the president \u2018was energetic, direct, funny, eloquent, and he laid out his accomplishments clearly and relevantly, connecting them with peoples\u2019 lives.\u2019<\/p>\n

McGurn agreed that the 81-year-old Biden \u2018was vigorous, more than we\u2019ve recently seen.\u2019<\/p>\n

But he added that the address \u2018had a get-off-my-lawn-you-rotten-kids! quality to it.\u2019<\/p>\n

And Clark Judge, who served as a speechwriter for the late President Ronald Reagan, concurred that Biden\u2019s address \u2018sounded angry. For its force, it depended upon him basically shouting and projecting outrage.\u2019<\/p>\n

And he charged that the speech was \u2018a laundry list of bad solutions for the problems he [Biden] caused.\u2019<\/p>\n

Biden used a portion of his address to spotlight the economic rebound during his tenure in the White House.<\/p>\n

\u2018I inherited an economy that was on the brink,\u2019 Biden noted before touting \u2018now our economy is the envy of the world.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

And he spotlighted that \u2018wages\u00a0keep\u00a0going up\u00a0and\u00a0inflation\u00a0keeps\u00a0coming down!\u2019<\/p>\n

But poll after poll indicates that Americans aren\u2019t giving the president much credit for the easing in inflation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And Biden went on offense against Trump and congressional Republicans on another issue where he\u2019s politically vulnerable, the crisis at the nation\u2019s southern border.<\/p>\n

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But Colin Reed, a veteran Republican strategist, said that when it came to the economy and the border, \u2018both were buried deep within the confines of the speech.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018On the two most important issues, he whiffed big time,\u2019 said Reed, a campaign veteran who served as a top adviser this cycle on a super PAC supporting former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie\u2019s 2024 GOP nomination bid.<\/p>\n

Biden is the oldest president in the nation\u2019s history. And polls indicate a majority of Americans harbor serious questions about his physical and mental ability to handle another four years in the White House.<\/p>\n

\u2018I know I may not look like it,\u00a0but I\u2019ve been around a while.\u00a0And when you get to my age,\u00a0certain things\u00a0become\u00a0clearer\u00a0than ever before,\u2019 Biden quipped near the end of his address.<\/p>\n

Seasoned Democratic strategist and communicator Chris Moyer acknowledged that the president \u2018can\u2019t stick his head in the sand and pretend voters don\u2019t know he\u2019s old, and this was the first time he took on his age directly. It was smart to do so, and I think he\u2019ll refine this more and more over the course of the campaign.\u2019<\/p>\n

And Moyer, who\u2019s served on multiple Democratic presidential campaigns, noted that \u2018this was more campaign speech and less State of the Union address.\u2019 But he argued that Biden \u2018did what he needed to do, showing a fighting spirit and hitting many of the expected notes on popular issues.\u2019<\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saddled with negative approval ratings and trailing former President Trump in the latest polling average of their general election rematch, President Biden went for the jugular in prime time Thursday evening as he delivered the State of the Union address with eight months to go until the November showdown. Biden early and often took aim <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":16673,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16672","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}