Faced with the dread caused by the war in Ukraine, and as the noose of COVID-19 loosens, will America be able to overcome its divisions? For his first speech on the state of the Union, Joe Biden in any case resumed on Tuesday his accents of unifying president.
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This annual ritual, by which the chief executive details his main political axes before Congress, offered scenes that have become rare in the United States: Republican and Democratic parliamentarians standing together, to show their support for the ambassador of Ukraine, guest of honour.
And even, with a few exceptions, to greet the entry of Joe Biden.
The 79-year-old democrat began his almost hour-long speech with a long diatribe against the “dictator” Vladimir Putin, a vibrant eulogy to the resistance of the Ukrainian people, and an affirmation of the cohesion of democracies in the face of “the ‘autocracy”.
He assured that the Russian president had not achieved his other objective, that of “dividing at home”.
Joe Biden, who campaigned on the promise to heal America’s ‘soul’, wants to see in the shared dread over the war in Ukraine, and the shared relief over the waning pandemic, a opportunity to get there.
“The Covid-19 must no longer govern our lives”, he proclaimed, facing parliamentarians, ministers, and judges of the Supreme Court, who had almost all abandoned the mask, following new recommendations from the authorities. sanitary.
balancing act
Recalling the sometimes violent debates on health measures, he added: “We cannot change our past divisions. But we can change the way we are going to move forward, on Covid-19 and other issues that we have to face together.
The president, whose confidence rating is anemic, knows well that in a few months, in the mid-term legislative elections, he risks losing his very slim parliamentary majority.
So the former senator, moderate at heart, engaged in a political balancing act before Congress.
No violent criticism from the Republican opposition, no attacks, as he was able to deliver, against his predecessor Donald Trump. Joe Biden tried not to offend anyone.
To conservative voters who charge him with laxity, he promised to invest in police forces in the face of soaring crime in the United States, and assured that he wanted to “secure” the southern border, where the migratory waves follow one another.
To his progressive supporters, he assured that he would fight to defend the right to abortion “threatened as never before” and for access to the vote for African-Americans.
He also promised his “support” for young transgender Americans, in the face of measures taken in certain conservative states against surgical or hormonal procedures followed by certain minors.
And Joe Biden, an incorrigible optimist, but also a tricky centrist, has bludgeoned themes that he hopes will be consensual, trying to be as concrete as possible, he who has seen his major social reform projects sink because of too small a parliamentary majority. .
He assured that tackling soaring inflation, which the White House has taken a long time to recognize, and which is certainly its main political handicap, was “his first priority”.
And, with accents almost reminiscent of Donald Trump, he pleaded for an industrial renaissance of the United States and for a reduction in dependence on imports: “Let’s produce in America!”
The Democrat cheered on a 13-year-old diabetic boy, Joshua Davis, when he called for a drop in the cost of drugs and in particular insulin. He also welcomed Stephen Breyer, 83, a magistrate on the departure of the Supreme Court, certainly progressive, but respected beyond partisan divisions.
And the president did not fail to recall the memory of his son Beau, who died of a brain tumor, and a veteran in Iraq, to discuss the fight against cancer and the health of veterans.
But Joe Biden, who after his speech lingered, without a mask, in the compound so familiar to him on Capitol Hill, certainly has no illusions about the reality of America’s divisions, or about the fate of the international order.
To access the Capitol, his convoy had to pass the barriers set up around the large white building. The same people who have long protected this symbol of democracy after its assault by supporters of Donald Trump on January 6, 2021.
And as the US president spoke, Russian airborne troops landed in Kharkiv, the Ukrainian military said, citing ongoing fighting in the major eastern Ukrainian city.