Thread by @latimes

President Biden took office 13 months ago vowing to halt the COVID-19 pandemic, improve the economy, soften U.S’s calcifying partisan division, restore faith in Washington’s leadership on the world stage & prove that democracies can function and deliver.

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As he prepares for his first State of the Union address on Tuesday — at a moment of rising anxiety across the nation and the world — those endeavors remain works in progress, at best. #SOTU2022

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“No president in my memory has had so many crises dumped onto him in the first year as Biden has, and the speech has to be equal to that,” said Bob Shrum, a Democratic speechwriter who aided President Clinton with his State of the Union addresses.

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Biden would have to strike a careful balance in the speech. He needs to highlight his administration’s successes, Bob Shrum said, but cannot strike a triumphalist tone.

“The key here is to not sound satisfied.”

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With the American public largely preoccupied with domestic matters and his approval rating in the low 40s, Biden must speak to Americans’ economic concerns while offering some reassurance that things are improving.

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“The president will be ridiculed if he says the state of the union is strong, but he doesn’t have to say it’s terrible,” said Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University. “They want honesty, but they also want hope.”

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Biden’s mixed success in curbing the pandemic and passing his legislative agenda has been further complicated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last week.

Read more from @EliStokols at latimes.com/politics/story…

The president is preparing to deliver the annual report on the state of the nation as we enter the third year of a global pandemic. That shared experience has unsettled our lives and politics in different ways.

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