Biden's Age Under The Microscope At State Of The Union Speech

With sagging approval numbers and evident public concern over his age, President Joe Biden has a dwindling number of opportunities before election day to address a large primetime audience, raising the stakes for his State of the Union speech Thursday as he makes the case for a second term.

The State of the Union may be Biden's only chance for the next several months to make that case in a high-profile setting before millions of voters, since the Democratic National Convention is still nearly half a year away and uncertainty hangs over the fall general election debates.

Biden faces "an incredible amount of pressure" to deliver a strong performance in the State of the Union, said Kait Sweeney, a progressive political consultant. "There's a limited number of moments between now and the election that he can really shape to be his own."

Heading into the State of the Union speech, Biden is behind in most national and battleground state polls to former President Donald Trump, the 2024 Republican frontrunner.

Biden will deliver the annual check-in to lawmakers as questions continue swirling around his age and fitness to serve a second term, following a special counsel report released last month that cast doubt on his mental acuity.

At 81 Biden is the oldest U.S. president in history. Trump, who is 77, would be the second oldest if he wins another term in the White House.

The State of the Union speech has evolved into a drawn-out ritual in the modern era. Presidents spend well over an hour on live television, between the speech itself and the time spent greeting lawmakers and other government officials on the way into and out of the House chamber.

The event is a challenging balancing act even in non-election years. But presidents face added scrutiny when they're up for reelection, and Biden will be under an even greater microscope due to the questions around his age.

Age Issue

"How he performs and how he looks, because of the age issue and what the polls are saying, will be crucial," said Barbara Perry, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia's Miller Center.

Television viewership for the State of the Union has declined in recent years from the 1990s and early 2000s, when Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush routinely drew more than 40 million viewers, according to Nielsen data. Some 27.3 million people watched Biden's State of the Union speech last year, a 29 percent drop from the previous year.

Still, the tens of millions of viewers who tune in Thursday night will be Biden's biggest audience of the year by far. Barring an unforeseen crisis that might prompt Biden to deliver an Oval Office address, the State of the Union speech will likely be his most important speech to the nation ahead of the Democratic National Convention in late August.

Biden spent the last few days at the presidential retreat at Camp David preparing for the speech before returning Tuesday to Washington.

"The president has been working [on the State of the Union speech] for the past several days," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday. "It's going to be a moment that's incredibly important to him."

The address offers Biden a platform to tout his record in office and outline what he hopes to accomplish in a second term, while rallying Democratic voters who backed him in 2020, said Chris Jackson, a pollster at Ipsos.

"For Biden, it really is about shoring up his base," Jackson said.

Biden is expected to use the speech to criticize Republicans for backing out of negotiations on border reform legislation after Trump urged GOP lawmakers to oppose a deal on immigration. Trump and Biden visited different sections of the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas on the same day last week, putting immigration front and center in the 2024 election. Republicans have said Biden does not need new legislation to take tougher action over immigration.

Biden will also likely take the opportunity to paint Republicans as extreme on abortion, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have made access to abortion a key campaign message as they court female voters in 2024.

Republicans concede that abortion is a winning issue for Democrats, but argue Trump has an advantage over Biden on a host of other top issues for voters. Polls consistently show a majority of Americans think Trump, not Biden, can better handle the border and economy.

Struggling on Immigration

"The Biden White House really has been struggling to find any kind of answer on immigration. Nothing they've done has worked," said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist. He added that Biden faces foreign policy challenges, including blowback from some Democrats for supporting Israel in its war with Hamas.

Sweeney and other Democrats said Biden should take the fight directly to Trump by drawing an explicit contrast in the speech between himself and his predecessor.

Biden used his previous two State of the Union speeches to make an appeal for bipartisanship, reprising a central theme from his 2020 presidential campaign. But the political landscape has shifted since then, and Biden has stepped up his criticism of Trump as part of his argument that American democracy is on the ballot in November.

Trump faces 91 felony charges in four separate criminal cases, including two brought by the Department of Justice for allegedly mishandling classified information and trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all the charges, and has attacked the investigations he's facing as a political "witch hunt" by the Biden administration and Democrats to keep him from returning to the White House.

Despite his legal problems, Trump is well on his way to securing a third consecutive Republican Party presidential nomination, setting the stage for a likely rematch with Biden. Trump has frequently criticized Biden's handling of the economy, immigration and foreign affairs. Trump has touted his own energy and mental fitness. In a recent interview he also said he believed presidents should be forced to take cognitive tests.

Both Trump and Biden took a step toward securing the nominations following big wins in primary voting on Super Tuesday.

If Biden and Trump are the nominees, they would normally square off in three general election debates that draw a large national audience. But Trump skipped all of the Republican primary debates to date, and it's unclear if he and Biden would agree to participate in debates in the fall.

For now, the State of the Union is Biden's best shot to win over voters who are only beginning to pay attention to the 2024 race, Perry said.

"Biden needs to look and sound sharp and vibrant," Perry said. "He will have no other audience like this until Election Day."