Philippa Kaur

The US president Joe Biden delivered his second State of the Union address with a message of optimism, declaring – as is customary – that “the state of the union is strong”. With newly elected Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy and Democrat vice-president Kamala Harris sat behind him, Biden launched what commentators described as his bid to win the 2024 presidential election.

Biden used his 70-minute address to talk up the achievements of his first two years in office, hailing America’s falling inflation and rapidly growing job market – described by one report as “shockingly strong”. In front of a divided Congress, after the GOP won control of the House in last year’s midterms, he laid out his legislative and policy objectives. But the mantra for the evening was: “Let’s finish the job” – a phrase he used a dozen times in his speech.

It is the first time that Biden has had an opportunity to drive this message home to a national audience.

“As I stand here tonight,” he said, “we have created a record 12 million new jobs – more jobs created in two years than any president has ever created in four years.”

Although inflation remains stubbornly high, Biden has spent a great deal of time advertising the success of his bipartisan infrastructure bill around the country. This occasion was no different, stating that his administration had “funded over 20,000 projects across America” to build “the best infrastructure in the world”.

Biden began his speech by congratulating McCarthy on his election to speaker – “Mr Speaker, I look forward to working together” – before repeatedly stressing the need to reach across the political divide, citing that in the previous two years he had signed “over 300 acts” into law that were bipartisan in nature.

“We have to see each other not as enemies, but as fellow Americans,” Biden told the assembled crowd.

He called on Republicans to address the issue of the debt ceiling to avoid defaulting on its debt obligations, something that treasury secretary Janet Yellen has called a potential “economic and financial catastrophe”.

Criticising “some” Republicans who he said “want to sunset Medicare and social security every five years”, Biden pledged to prevent them from doing this, and then – in a nod to the bipartisan style he had adopted – ad-libbed that he knew the majority of the GOP agreed with him.

Calling for a higher rate of taxes for major US corporations, Biden said: “The tax system is simply unfair” – much to the delight of progressives in his own party.

And with the parents of Tyre Nichols – who died recently after being pulled over and apparently beaten by traffic police in Memphis, Tennessee, in an incident caught on video camera – watching from the gallery, Biden called for police reform and a ban on assault weapons. “We have an obligation to make all people safe,” he said.

But in the Republican-controlled House, many of his more progressive demands are likely to fall on deaf ears. While acknowledging this, Biden stressed that if conservatives think they can pass any legislation during this Congress that makes abortion illegal, “I will veto it.” He called on Congress to codify reproductive rights.

Eyes on 2024

As had been widely predicted, Biden’s speech was clearly the unofficial launchpad for his bid for a second term in office. It would be no surprise to see “Let’s finish the job!” as the tagline for his 2024 campaign.

But despite this speech, several things stand against him being returned to the White House in 2024.

Man with a plan: Biden’s 70-minute speech highlighted his administration’s achievments and called on Congress and the American people to ‘finish the job’.
EPA-EFE/Jim Lo Sclazo

Firstly, the majority of Americans feel that, despite their president’s assertion,the state of the union is not to be celebrated. Recent polls reveal that the public are yet to be convinced by Biden’s handling of the war in Ukraine, the economy, and even his ability to unite the nation.

His handling of the recent spy balloon saga has also led to severe criticism for doing “too little, too late”. A poll taken on February 5 showed that 62% of Americans would be “angry” or “dissatisfied” if he were elected again.

One of the biggest issues remains his age. Should Biden be successful in the 2024 election, he will be 82 when he begins his second term – the oldest US president to be elected to office. Another recent poll revealed that only 28% rate him positively on “having the necessary mental and physical health to be president”.

But while his age may be against him, time might be on Biden’s side. By November 2024, the economy could well be in recovery. Inflation fell in December for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, and the administration hopes this trend will continue over the next 18 months.

Brian Deese, Biden’s chief economic adviser, told reporters this week that he felt that as far as the administration’s major economic bills were concerned, “2023 is the year in which the most significant impact will begin to occur”.

And while Biden’s polls are not the best, they are certainly better than the Republicans’. Polls reveal that Americans currently have little confidence that Republican leaders would fare much better.

The road to the White House is a marathon not a sprint, but Biden has clearly put himself into the race. His first steps on that journey will take place in Wisconsin on Wednesday, where he won narrowly in 2020. He is expected to confirm his re-election bid at a rally there to discuss his economic plan, before heading to Florida the following day to talk about Medicare and social security. More

When the US Department of Justice revealed on January 21 that its investigators had found classified materials in Joe Biden’s Delaware home, there was outrage – or, to be more accurate in most cases faux outrage – in Republican party circles. They wasted no time in demanding further investigation into what appeared to be a mishandling of classified documents.

Republicans see a double opportunity in the US president’s sloppy handling of what is reported to be a small number of papers from his days as vice-president. It was a God-given opportunity to embarrass a sitting president gearing up to launch his re-election bid. But many in the GOP hoped it would also take the heat off an outwardly similar investigation into former president Donald Trump.

Trump allegedly took thousands of classified documents to his Florida home, Mar a Lago, when he left the White House in January 2021 – a matter that has been under FBI investigation since 2022.

Both the current president and his immediate predecessor have been found in possession of classified materials which should have been passed to the National Archives and Records Administration (Nara). This has been US law since the passage of the Presidential Records Act in 1978, which states that any records created or received by the president as part of his constitutional, statutory or ceremonial duties are the property of the US government, to be managed by Nara at the end of the administration.

As a result, US attorney general Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to investigate each president’s actions. Jack Smith has been appointed to Trump’s case. Smith is a career prosecutor whose CV boasts a range of achievements including convicting gang members of killing New York cops, prosecuting a sitting US senator, and bringing war crimes cases at The Hague.

Robert Hur, the US attorney in Maryland during the Trump administration and now a litigation partner at a top Washington law firm, has been appointed to investigate Biden’s case.

While Garland has no power to indict a sitting president, the US Congress could impeach Biden if his actions are found to be a “high crime and misdemeanour”. But in Trump’s case, if he is found to have broken the Presidential Records Act after leaving office, he could face a fine or even a three-year jail term.

As you’d expect, the US media has been quick to compare Biden’s actions with those of Trump. Yet as of now, the cases appear very different.

In Biden’s case, investigators have reportedly found a very small number of papers – seemingly from his final year as vice-president – at his home and at the Penn Biden Center, a thinktank that the president founded in Washington DC. It has yet to be revealed how many documents there are or their level of classification.

As soon as they were unearthed, the Biden team handed them over to Nara and has cooperated with the authorities ever since, proactively inviting a search of Biden properties. Interestingly, a cache of similar papers has reportedly been found at the Indiana home of Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence.

The contrast with Trump is stark. He left the White House with thousands of pages of classified documents. Among the first batch recovered by Nara a year after they were discovered were documents described by national archivist Debra Steidel Wall as:

Classified national security information, up to the level of Top Secret and including Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Program materials.

Rather than acquiesce to Nara’s demands under the law, Trump refused to return them, had to be raided by the FBI for the state to get them back, and then fought in court for months to keep them.

Under investigation: Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Pennsylvania.
EPA-EFE/Tracie van Auken

It’s not clear why Trump took these documents. Speculation ranges from covering his back to seeking financial gain by using the materials in post-presidential dealings. It’s also possible he may have been trying to preserve his reputation prior to launching his third bid for the presidency.

So far then, two very different actions by the two most recent incumbents of the White House. However, for all Biden’s insistence in following the process, he made one crucial political misstep that could dog the remainder of his first term in office.

Biden’s misstep

On November 2 2022, Biden’s personal lawyers found the first batch of classified documents from the Obama-Biden era locked in an office that Biden had used since leaving office.

They informed Nara the same day, and its officials took possession of the papers the following day. This was five days before the crucial US midterm elections – yet Biden did not go public about the find until January 9 2023, having been tipped off by CBS News that it was running the story.

This was manna from heaven for Republicans. The party had failed to achieve the massive gains it had expected in the midterms, and was disheartened by Trump’s lacklustre return to the campaign trail. Biden’s approval rating, meanwhile, had ticked up six points from a July 2022 low of 38%. So, with new House speaker Kevin McCarthy in place, it was a chance to raise a stink in Congress at the very least.

Why did Biden wait? Undoubtedly, he recalled the devastation to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid when the then FBI director, James Comey, announced a week before the election that he had reopened the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private server to send classified emails while secretary of state, potentially breaking the Federal Records Act of 1950.

While Comey confirmed to Congress two days before the election that Clinton had no case to answer, the damage was done. Clearly Biden didn’t relish his own Clinton moment as a knife-edge midterm approached.

It is unlikely Biden will face charges over the papers found so far. But the discovery of any more caches of documents would be highly damaging for the president. And that’s the last thing the Democrats need if he plans to run in what is likely to be a close and rancorous 2024 election. More