This room. It was after 10 o’clock by the time President Joe Biden completed his state of the union address, the Republicans by then scooting out the door in need of libation and the Democrats offering a last round of thunderous applause. The House of Representatives chamber is a jaw-dropping sight on a night like this, not just because of its architecture of old world European hauteur mingling with American sensibility – the state crests on the roof, the gold stars, the eagle crest, the absurdly chill air-conditioning – and not just because it holds within its wallpapered walls an enormous store of history.
But because everyone was here.
For a few minutes, just after Biden arrived – his short car journey from the White House delayed by Gaza protesters – there existed a fluid tableau where vice-president Kamala Harris stood in awkward silence beside speaker Mike Johnson, all pleasantries long exhausted; where the assembling justices of the supreme court were gathered in their black robes; where veteran senators and members of Congress chatted and hugged and where, for a brief moment, the whole show resembled that anarchic period at a lavish wedding when everyone is famished, the dinner gong has yet to be sounded and the effects of the bubbly are beginning to kick in.
It was Biden’s role to serve as the arriving schoolmaster, there to restore order on the politicians, on the room, on the country. It was his moment, his night.
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There’s an argument to be made that had they managed to tailor his speech to a blistering 35 minutes, it could be classed as a tour de force. But the 70-minute delivery never sagged. His voice never weakened and, from the opening notes, when he invoked the delivery of Franklin Roosevelt in the winter of 1941, he was intent on placing the decision American voters face this November in the starkest terms.
“President Roosevelt’s purpose was to wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this was no ordinary moment. Freedom and democracy were under assault in the world. Tonight, I come to the same chamber to address the nation. Now it is we who face an unprecedented moment in the history of the union.”
Not once did he utter the name of Donald Trump. Instead, he referred to “my predecessor” in an address that was a sustained rebuke of his Republican rival and carried, too, a cold, scolding tone at the failure of Republican legislators to endorse key Bills on the border and on aid for Ukraine.
“January 6th and the lies about the 2020 election, and the plots to steal the election, posed the gravest threat to our democracy since the civil war. My predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth of January 6th. I will not do that. This is a moment to speak the truth and bury the lies. And here’s the simplest truth. You can’t love your country only when you win.”
On paper, the words read simply. But in his delivery Biden found something of the old energy and, although never an inspired orator, he used the stagecraft of 50 years to let his message hit home, to raise his voice on the right syllable.
He fumbled just a few words and there was no faltering. Whether his key points on the climate and debt and increased support for Gaza register with the voters he needs to recruit remains to be seen. But the night belonged to Biden and even the supreme court justices came in for a withering critique for overturning Roe v Wade. “With all due respect, justices, women are not without electoral or political power.”
Here was the antithesis of the elder Donald Trump likes to mock as “Sleepy Joe”. Nowhere in evidence, either, was the folksy statesman who visited Ireland last year. This was Joe Biden as canny, well-versed political operator.
There was a curious vignette when Mitch McConnell, the Republican speaker, followed Kamala Harris into the room at the start of the ceremony. The politicians had been gathering since early evening, the sky pink around the Capitol and the mood light.
The applause for Harris was polite on both sides of the house. The Kentuckian strolled to his seat. Around him, the chatter was general and McConnell found himself perfectly alone in a crowded room. He drummed his fingers against the back of the leather armchair he leant against and looked around.
For a split second, the man who has enjoyed such power in this room looked lost. Then someone came up and engaged him in conversation. McConnell sat still as a portrait through the ebb and flow of Biden’s speech and his face – always a coda for southern inscrutability – remained just so. But McConnell has a sharp ear, and as he listened to Biden’s varying lectures – on what to do about the border, on education, on aid for Ukraine – he must have wondered about the future direction of the Grand Old Party on which his once immense influence is in its waning days.
For the line of seats directly behind McConnell offered a succinct visual profile of the changing face – and faces – of Republicanism. Just over his shoulder sat Mitt Romney, another veteran ready to bow out, looking robust and tan and emanating a kind of lost courtliness throughout the evening. Romney has made little secret of his disdain for Donald Trump.
At one point, towards the end of Biden’s speech when Romney heard the president say “whether young or old, I’ve always known what endures. Our north star. The very idea of America, that we are all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives. We’ve never lived up to that idea but we’ve never walked away from it either”, he rose to his feet to applaud the sentiments.
Three rows back from him sat Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgian Republican congresswoman who closed a Super Tuesday interview with Emily Maitlis, the former BBC Newsnight anchor and current presenter of The News Agents podcast, by telling her to “f*** off”.
Taylor Greene wore a Trump-red blazer and a red Maga hat (the 2020 version, curiously). She also wore a T-shirt bearing the name of Laken Riley, the nursing student from Georgia recently murdered; a crime for which a Venezuelan immigrant has been charged. When Biden entered the chamber, Greene made it her business to present him with a pin and, when the issue of border control came up, shouted at the president to say Riley’s name – which he did.
Behind Greene sat Matt Gaetz, who wore a blue suit and an amused smile. It was Gaetz who greeted the news that McConnell will step down as Republican leader of the Senate by firing out a social media message: “We’ve now 86′d: McCarthy. McDaniel. McConnell. Better days are ahead for the Republican Party”.
And as the ranks sat stonily, by the close, through Biden’s hour-long delivery, it was clear that at the very least they are headed towards different days.
Television audiences have dipped dramatically since the 60 million viewers who tuned in back in 1993. But Biden’s power-punches will be spliced into social media nuggets and it could be that his closing few lines will resonate.
“My fellow Americans, the issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are: it’s how old our ideas are. Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are among the oldest of ideas. But you can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back. To lead America, the land of possibilities, you need a vision for the future of what America can and should be. Tonight you’ve heard mine. I see a future where we defend democracy, not diminish it.”
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