By John Micek
Normally, when you’re a guest in someone’s house, it’s good manners to roll with the punches, and take whatever comes your way.
Bed too hard? It’s only one night. You’ll live. Don’t like the soup they served for dinner? Maybe you packed snacks in your duffle bag. And if someone says something off-color or hostile at the table, you nod, smile, and file it away for next time.
And then there’s President Joe Biden, who showed no inclination to take any grief from an openly hostile, Republican-controlled House of Representatives as he delivered his State of the Union address on Tuesday night.
Biden served for decades in the glorified AirBnB at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue from his current residence, knows its rules, knows when to compromise and when to counter-punch, and gave as good as he got from a clown-car GOP backbench that called him a liar – and more.
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., opened the hostilities, accusing Biden of lying when he said Republicans were planning to sunset Social Security and Medicare.
Never mind that there was more than a grain of truth in the charge – it was included in a GOP re-election platform authored by U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., that Republicans could not run away from fast enough during the 2022 midterm elections.
Democrats dined out on the platform to great effect, occasionally straining the limits of credulity, even as they effectively neutralized what was supposed to be a banner year for the GOP.
Breaking from his script, Biden took on his critics on live TV, telling them he was pleased there was no plan to attack the bedrock entitlement programs.
“I’m glad to see – no, I tell you, I enjoy conversion,” Biden punched back, all but setting the stage for his 2024 re-election bid.
He similarly parried with GOP lawmakers who blamed him for the illegal drugs smuggled across the nation’s southern border. Another lawmaker lobbed an expletive, according to the New York Times.
And acknowledging GOP lawmakers who were mulling an effort to repeal the administration’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act, Biden had his rejoinder at the ready.
“That’s OK,” he quipped. “As my coach would say, ‘lots of luck in your senior year.’”
And Biden couldn’t resist jabs at Republicans who have disparaged the $1.2 trillion infrastructure law, but who have been only too happy to take the money for the projects that it’s underwritten back home.
Granted, Biden stretched the truth on his job-creation claims and on efforts to tame the exporting of American jobs, as the Washington Post pointed out. On the other hand, acts of rhetorical gymnastics are hardly surprising in a speech that basically amounts to a victory lap.
But if Republicans were surprised by the vigor of Biden’s rebuttals, they have only themselves to blame.
For the last two years, the conservative echo chamber has trafficked in the fiction that Biden, 80, is too weak and infirm to lead effectively, only to get their hats handed to them as the Democrat revived his presidency, and with it, his party’s political fortunes in 2022, as Politico noted last fall.
It’s also worth pointing out that these are the same Republicans who maintain a slavish loyalty to the 76-year-old master of Mar-A-Lago, whose capacity for self-sabotage is bottomless, and whose legal problems appear equally depthless.
Biden opened his speech with an appeal for bipartisan cooperation, arguing that Republicans and Democrats had worked together in the prior Congress, and could do so again in the GOP-controlled House.
“The people sent us a clear message. Fighting for the sake of fighting, power for the sake of power, conflict for the sake of conflict gets us nowhere,” Biden said.
In the end, though, it was Republicans, with their jibes and boos, who came off looking foolish and ill-equipped to govern — which couldn’t have cheered U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., (who was forced to shush his own members) as he sits down to negotiate with the White House over the debt limit.
But that’s the modern GOP. The former president tore up, then burned, the etiquette manual, leaving his acolytes believing they could behave as they please.
And Biden, ever the adult in the room, handled them the same way you handle ill-mannered children who refuse to behave around the table.
He put them in their place with grace and humor — but with no mistake about who was in charge.
This commentary was published earlier by the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, an affiliate of the nonprofit States Newsroom network which includes the Florida Phoenix.
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Jimbo99 says
The photo of the House Speaker is priceless, sitting back in his chair staring at the ceiling. Don’t want to get Biden all worked up, he might fall down or babble unintelligible words worse than he butchers them already.
Laurel says
Jimbo99: So you think Biden has eyes in the back of his head? Logic, please.
Ray W. says
Hello, Laurel,
Since one of the subjects in this comment thread is partisan hackery, as exemplified by the intellectually incurious side of Jimbo99’s commentary, I looked up Alexander Hamilton’s views on partisan politics, as he expressed them in the final paragraphs of Federalist Paper #37:
“We had occasion, in a former paper, to take notice of the repeated trials which have been unsuccessfully made in the United Netherlands for reforming the baneful and notorious vices of their constitution. The history of almost all the great councils and consultations held among mankind for reconciling their discordant opinions, assuaging their mutual jealousies, and adjusting their respective interests, is a history of factions, contentions, and disappointments, and may be classed among the most dark and degraded pictures which display the infirmities and depravities of the human character. If, in a few scattered instances, a brighter aspect is presented, they serve only as exceptions to admonish us of the general truth; and by their lustre to darken the gloom of the adverse prospect to which they are contrasted. In revolving the causes from which these exceptions result, and applying them to the particular instance before us, we are necessarily led to two important conclusions. The first is, that the convention must have enjoyed, in a very singular degree, an exemption from the pestilential influence of party animosities — the disease most incident to deliberative bodies, and most apt to contaminate their proceedings. The second conclusion is that all the deputations composing the convention were satisfactorily accommodated by the final act, or were induced to accede to it by a deep conviction of the necessity of sacrificing private opinions and partial interests to the public good, and by a despair of seeing this necessity diminished by delays or by new experiments.”
First, is it fair for me to argue that Hamilton, who served on Washington’s staff throughout the Revolution and served as Washington Secretary of the Treasury until his death, was one of the most important of our many founding fathers.
Second, if I at least partially understand Hamilton’s points, is it fair for me to argue that whenever I attempt to encourage Jimbo99 to exercise a greater level of intellectual rigor in his comments, am I trying to lessen the “infirmities and depravities” of his character, to everyone’s benefit? I remain frustrated by Jimbo99 because I believe he is capable of so much more.
Third, if don miller were to have characterized his version of the scene in the House chamber between Biden and a vocal Republican minority bloc as a mutual “contamination” arising from the “pestilential influence of party animosities” on both sides, would don miller’s comments have carried more weight with you?
Ray W. says
My apologies, Laurel. I erred. Madison is considered the author of Federalist Paper #37, not Hamilton.
Madison is also considered one of the more significant of our founding fathers. Considered in his day as one of the best educated and most intellectual of the members of the Constitutional Convention, he took to the floor of the House in 1796 to dispute the assertion that he was a founding father of our Constitution. Apparently, members of the House were already arguing about the original intent of the founding fathers. Madison told the House that although he had written the published draft of the Constitution, he considered it to have been a dead document at the time of its publication. Since the document lacked life at that time, he reasoned, he could not have been one of its founding fathers. He argued that the members of the various state ratifying conventions were the founding fathers, if anyone was a founding father, as they were the ones who breathed life into the dead document.
As an aside, if as early as 1796 House members were already arguing about the original intent of the authors of the Constitution, and the actual scribe who wrote the document told them he wasn’t one of the founders, then I find it hard to accept the idea that a minority of our Supreme Court Justices can magically discern its original meaning any more clearly than could those House members who were around when our nation was founded.
If I am right, there was never a monolithic original intent of the founders, re: the Constitution; they were too divided over its meaning to ever come to a single original intent. I believe I am supported in this conclusion by the story that the members of the Constitutional Convention at one point were close to giving up and dissolving the deliberative body without publishing anything. One of the members suggested that they stop trying to create a perfect document, because they could never reach a consensus on every facet of the document. He acknowledged that not one member could ever create a document that all the other members could agree to in its totality. Instead, he suggested, they should work on creating a document, any document, no matter its shortcomings and imperfections, and let the people vote on it, up or down. A few days later, the proposed Constitution was published, lifeless as it was.
Laurel says
I believe we’re talking about balance, and try to refer to it as”compromise.” That aims for, but never really creates “a more perfect union.” Then again, *more perfect*? I’m not seeing that attempt today, and it’s very disappointing. There’s the leaning towards fascism in one direction and socialism in the other, with a lack of compromise from either side, and very little grey area in between. Instead of educating constituents with dry, bare bone facts, many in politics and medias are happy to create fantasies and fears. I know that’s clearly not new, but it is a terrible injustice. The constitution is our glue, and the very existence of our country depends on this glue. We all should be very early of anyone who attempts to remove it, and that especially includes foreign governments, which are actively working to destroy our imperfect union.
Laurel says
“Wary” not “early.” Got a love/hate relationship with spell check.
Doug Brown says
Bidens problem, one of many, he tries to treat people like children coming across like an angry senile old grandparent. He has no respect from anyone. “No joke Man”.
Larry says
Biden is a LOSER. The GOP will stay on his ass until he is impeached or leaves the Presidency due to health reasons. America is tired as HELL over these leftist commie democrats. Your time is UP Biden !
Deborah Coffey says
He did indeed! I’m going to stop underestimating Joe Biden. He has exceeded all my expectations.
Robert Joseph Fortier says
Well you may be “over estimating” him now…He says what others tell him to say…period!
Sherry says
Please publish actual “facts” to confirm your ridiculous statement. Thanks!
feddy65 says
I agree I underestimated him also, I thought he couldnt get more pathetic than he was, I admit I was wrong.
Jackson1955 says
From Sarah Palin to Donald Trump, the GOP has become the party of outrageousness. All drama, no substance. As you would expect, this would create a downward spiral and on cue, her comes MTG, Boebert and George Santos. It’s as though we’re witnessing the devolution of a political party on fast forward.
Keep up the good work President Biden, just remember: “The emptiest container makes the loudest noise”.
don miller says
biden mouthed off and that is a sign of strength? then the the repubs tripled his sign because they mouthed off more and louder. He still come out on the bottom. Mr. reach across the aisle couldn’t control himself and started the partisan attacks during his speech with distortions he thought no one would challenge. But because he thought they deserved it it was okay to act that way. He even looks old and weak. Not anything that would scare an adversary with a balloon.
Atwp says
He is still the President. O he has more power than Trump and the insurrection non thinking people who are slowly going to prison. Just love when white people act like dummies and get punished.
Ray W. says
Another example of the type of commenter that our founding fathers knew would always exist among us. They hoped our liberal democratic Constitutional republic would foster men (and women) of virtue, but they greatly feared people like Don Miller. The partisan Don Miller offers proof of why our founding fathers inserted checks and balances into their proposed Constitution, which they explained as their effort to pit partisan against partisan, so as to counter every perceived or anticipated variety of abuse of power that could flow from actions by elected or appointed officials who were more than willing to swear an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution, and then set out to abuse their powers.
Athenian philosophers posited that 50,000 citizens were the maximum population base of a stable polis. Montesquieu posited that 100,000 citizens was the number. Our founding fathers, many of whom were widely read intellectuals educated in the Scottish Enlightenment philosophy taught in the eastern liberal arts colleges of their day, knew of the history of Athenian democracy and of Montesquieu’s political philosophy. They closely studied human nature. At the time of the Constitutional Convention, the 13 colonies are estimated to have held around 4 million people. The debate was how to create a governmental framework that could survive the dysfunction that had struck down every historical attempt to create a stable democracy. Their answer was to pit the federal, state, county, and municipal governments against each other, each with very limited powers, each with the power to challenge the others’ perceived abuses of powers, but none with all power, in the hopes that their experiment might survive those ambitious people, wholly lacking in virtue, who would always strive to overthrow their fledgling government.
Our founding fathers would never have constructed their potential government in a way as to allow people like Don Miller to achieve unlimited power for an indeterminate period of time. They did, however, hope to rely on Don Miller’s inability to see anything other than what he wants to see, in their effort to keep the worst among us out of office. Our founding fathers were well versed with the philosophical argument of “first principals.” To them, a first principal was an idea that had already been thought through and adopted; it no longer needed to be discussed. In essence, first principals allow people to act without thought. Such people, like Don Miller, have already accepted what they believe, they have adopted it as a basic precept. Thought is no longer needed. This is what happens when common sense is perceived as a result. If common sense is a process, each of us needs to go through the process over and over again, as a necessary intellectual challenge to determine common sense. If common sense is a result, someone else can tell us what it means, or we can just rely on what we have previously accepted, without any intellectual challenge to what we believe.
For example, in the early years of American slavery, a debate among religious scholars arose over the question of whether slaves had souls. The religious debate spanned decades. Finally, early in the 19th century, the Catholic church was the first to publish documents accepting the idea that slaves had souls. Protestant religions took much longer reach that conclusion. Unfortunately, when you prosecute and defend people for a living, you come across people from time to time who still hold onto the idea that slaves lacked souls. Some ideas simply take a long time to disappear from a culture. For decades, slave holders held fast with the first principal that their slaves lacked souls. After all, even the slave holders knew that they could not possess human beings who inherently possess a God-given soul!
Laurel says
Ray W.: Well, whatever is convenient for the masters.
I am also reminded of the argument if whether some people are teachable or not. Apparently, at some young point in life, some people become unteachable. Biden spent a lot of time explaining what he wants for the middle class, and yet there are many middle class people who prefer to listen to Trump spend a lot of time talking about himself. My favorite quote from Jeff Goldblum’s character, Micheal in the movie “The Big Chill,” is about rationalization:
Michael:
I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They’re more important than sex.
Sam Weber:
Ah, come on. Nothing’s more important than sex.
Michael:
Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?
don miller says
I saw what I saw and not anything imagined. he said he was always a reach across the aisle type of guy (not deniable it is on video) and violated that pledge on the biggest platform available (not deniable it was on video) –the people’s house with his political attack and got it back in his face.. That makes him a fraud and liar. No way around it , he violated it after he pledged it. Just Obama who scolded another equal branch of the gov at a SOTU message (not deniable on video) and then got roughed up himself. Our founding father’s knew there would be those who wanted to be executive and judge as Obama proved. That is why they checked and balanced him out of it. Bad manners Biden gets an invitation to the someone’s house and picks a fight. But because some like him and hate the other guys that behavior is deserved and approved. Uncivil.
Laurel says
Don Miller: You may have been watching, but your interpretation does not make your case.
Ray W. says
Reread your first comment. You will see that you were just talking to hear your head roar.
Reread your second comment. You will see that you did a better job of expressing your beliefs. I don’t agree with each of your several points, but I don’t have to.
Anyone can be a partisan hack. Just read any of Dennis C. Rathsam’s comments. Now he is the epitome of a partisan hack. It takes intellectual rigor to be a zealous advocate. Zealous advocacy can promote a singular point of view. Our court system is built on zealous advocacy, through which each party zealously pursues a singular point of view.
Our founding fathers abhorred partisan hacks. They fostered zealous advocacy.
You have a choice each time you put fingers to keys. Partisan hack? Zealous advocacy! We would all be better off if you chose zealous advocacy. Maybe that is not your style. Oh, well!
Ray W. says
I was referring Don Miller’s two comments, not Laurel’s.
don miller says
and joe is the biggest partisan hack we have. he has been in congress his whole adult life hacking away and now pretending he is the great peace maker. He disproves his own claim and riles them up at the state of the union by distorting the facts. Not peacemaking. The bottom line is those that can’t admit his duplicity, when it is on full display, are self righteous to the point they believe they can assail anyone they want at any time just and justify it by believing it is okay because those they assail are brutes who deserve it. Uncivil.. Tagging the entire repub party at the SOTU as entitlement assaulters because Rick Scott appears so? If that be true, then all dems are American military haters because some of them like Omar have called for war crimes trials over Afghan, Palestine and Iraq. Admit it, it is just all about lock step cheerleading Biden for the sake of cheerleading. That is a credibility problem for the pom pom wavers.
Ray W. says
You are backsliding already. Intellectual rigor should be your goalpost. You exemplify the “infirmities and depravities of the human character”, as Madison so aptly put it. Our founding fathers were afraid of partisan hacks like you, but they knew you and others like you would always exist. They studied human nature and attempted to create a constitution that could survive the likes of you, but only time will tell, because people like you will never stop. This is why Madison used terms like “infirmities” and “depravities” to describe partisan members of factions. So long as you aspire to belong to a faction, you will suffer from infirmities and engage in depravities, by founding father definition.
Ray W. says
As an aside, don miller is missing the entire point.
Don miller’s comments in this thread reflect a type of partisan hackery that our founding fathers greatly feared. They used extraordinary words and phrases to describe anyone who acts as don miller acts. This is why I repeatedly answer his comments. If don miller were to begin acting as a zealous advocate, as opposed to engaging in partisan hackery, he will immediately see an improvement in the power of his arguments.
Nowhere in any of my comments in this thread do I comment on Biden’s performance during the SOTU speech. I don’t have to. I don’t support many politicians. I do oppose some politicians. I have commented before that I began posting comments to the FlaglerLive site after I read about a local politician who took to the local radio airwaves to suggest that it was time to start beheading democrats. People like that local politician are among us. They really do want to kill democrats. Political violence is nothing new. People attending rallies occasionally shout out their desire to start killing democrats.
I will continue to point out partisan hackery in comments posted to FlaglerLive. I will encourage partisan hacks to use a little more intellectual rigor, as many of the points they attempt to make have value; it is the method of presentation that makes their valid points wrong.
I repeatedly point out that our founding fathers felt that people like don miller were a curse upon mankind. Madison used the phrase “… pestilential influence of party animosities” in Federalist Paper #37.
The great question posed in Federalist Paper #1 was whether it was even possible for mankind to ever found a government based on the ideals of reason and choice. They didn’t know if could even be done, but they were determined to try. They wondered whether mankind was forever destined to be ruled by governments based on accident or force, with accident being defined as the accident of royal birth order (you got who you got) and force being defined by the tyranny of strongmen. This last description of the eternal possibility of rule by strongmen is perhaps why David Brooks, one of the elder statesmen of conservatism today, wrote of Trump’s comment that only he (Trump) could fix things as perhaps the least conservative comment a politician could ever make.
Stop being a partisan hack, don miller. I am not disagreeing with your points. I am disagreeing with your delivery.
Robert Joseph Fortier says
sort of like the spy ballon that recently cruised across our nation???
Ed says
[Commenter, if you’re going to self-congratulate, you obviously don’t need an audience. Don’t taunt, don’t gloat. Rephrase. Thanks.–FL]
Maybe I missed it, but did anyone mention anything about Nancy Pelosi tearing up Trumps state of the union speech on national tv for all our children to witness what libs consider proper decorum?
Oh,snap. Did I hear a microphone drop?