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Which Joe Biden will Americans see for the next eight months?
Is it the vigorous, smiling president who tangled with Republicans in real time during the high-wire act of a nationally televised address Thursday?
Or is it the “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” who a special counsel determined would be too sympathetic to prosecute for mishandling classified data and will be described in testimony this week?
The thundering grandfather is hitting the road, taking his State of the Union persona to a monthlong tour of swing states in the hopes of inspiring Democrats to get involved in the election. First up, campaign rallies in the Philadelphia area on Friday and the Atlanta area on Saturday – urban centers in states Biden narrowly won in 2020. His campaign is also launching ad campaigns to target Black and Hispanic audiences as well as March Madness viewers.
Meanwhile, Robert Hur, the special counsel, will be testifying on Capitol Hill about his impression of Biden’s memory lapses during the investigation into classified material (mostly in handwritten notebooks) found in Biden’s Delaware garage and elsewhere.
The other recent example of a forceful Biden moment came after Hur released his report in February absolving the president of criminal wrongdoing but also revealing that investigators found his “memory was significantly limited” during interviews, with the report noting that Biden could not remember when his son died. Biden delivered a harsh rebuke at a hastily called White House news conference.
It’s hard to square the wildly different impressions being pushed at voters:
► If State of the Union Biden…
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