President Joe Biden sought to repair Americans’ faith in his leadership with a forceful State of the Union address last night that portrayed him as a resolute champion of financially squeezed families at home and freedom abroad. …
The speech was the performance of a president who remains confident in his political compass, even as the steep and persistent decline in his job-approval ratings since last summer has caused many people in both parties to question it. …
Few presidents have come into a State of the Union address needing a second wind as badly as Biden did last night. A flurry of national polls released just before the speech showed his job-approval rating sinking to 40 percent or lower, the equivalent of a blinking red light on a car dashboard. … Perhaps most ominous for Biden, the recent Suffolk, ABC/Washington Post, and Fox polls all found that only about one-third of Americans now view him as a strong leader, with about three-fifths rejecting that description. CONTINUED
Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic
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