Martin Schram

The Kid was back (but we didn’t know it yet). The President of the United States was channeling his inner Scranton Joe (but we hadn’t seen it yet).

“Mister Speaker, the President of the United States!”

The introduction by the House Sergeant-at-Arms was still echoing as a smiling, eyes-gleaming Joe Biden began that familiar, slow walk down the center aisle. He took his time, shaking as many Democratic and Republican hands as possible at the start of Thursday night’s State of the Union address.

He looked as happy as he used to look in the old days when we first became friends. Yet of course he was painfully aware of the latest news headlines about his Democratic coalition unraveling and his polls being underwater. His White House’s three years of silence and no problem-solving innovations at the southern border have led to a devastating decline in Hispanic voter support. A New York Times/Siena College poll last month showed that Biden’s lead over Donald Trump among Hispanic voters – it was almost 2 to 1 – had vanished. They were now statistically even. Americans felt they were reeling under still-inflated grocery prices. Never mind that economists were praising an economic soft-landing recovery.

Yet, watching Biden working both sides of the aisle, I recognized his long-lost Fun-Time look. I had seen that grin, gleam, and energy decades ago, when we got to know each other. He loved the Washington game, especially when I told him what it was like covering Nixon’s Watergate White House, and how I got around Nixon’s order to freeze me out.

But how far into the speech would Biden get before that energy was spent and the gaffes that he had always committed would become his headline? What I didn’t know was that he had a new level of leadership secret weapon.

Scranton Joe had channeled his inner Give ‘Em Hell, Harry. It would take him to a new level of political leadership command and control. Harry Truman, who was president when The Kid really was a kid, had confounded pols, pundits, and polls with his 1948 comeback election victory by campaigning against a “Do Nothing” Congress. “I didn’t give them hell,” Truman later explained. “I just told them the truth and they thought it was hell!”

Give ‘Em Hell, Joe ended up giving perhaps the best speech of his life – and certainly the best of his presidency. He did it with a little help from his friends – and a helluva lot of help from his enemies. (As we’ll soon explain.)

State of the Union addresses are infamously boring because even the most eloquent presidents turn them into blah-blah laundry lists of issues and promises. Members of Congress use them mainly as stand-up/sit-down applause workouts. (Then, as we are now seeing, they do little else the rest of the year.)

But Biden was prepared by a speech and strategy staff that has often failed him in the past. And Thursday night, he was prepared to hammer home his issues in short, concise points. And he loved to goad Republicans into shouting taunts at him that he then ad-libbed his compact put-down.

And 13 times he attacked his Republican opponent, Donald Trump. Never by name; always by referring to “my predecessor.” The nail-sharp points he hammered hit home to the millions of blue-collar middle Americans who have become proud (no longer ashamed) to call themselves MAGA Trump voters:

Women who depend on IVF and want a return of Roe v. Wade. Buy American requirements. Obamacare’s health-care security. Big Pharma’s price gouging. Fair-share taxing of millionaires – no tax hikes for families making $400,000 or less.

Each time, Democrats stood and cheered. Each time most Republican pols sat silently – a few jeered.

Biden blasted “my predecessor” for killing the bipartisan border reform that conservatives said had the toughest-ever enforcement provisions: 1,500 more security agents and officers; 100 more immigration judges for the 2 million case backload; 4,300 more asylum officers and new policies to resolve cases in six months instead of six years; 100 more drug-detection machines to help halt fentanyl smuggling that kills our children.

Republicans hooted and shouted “No.” But Oklahoma’s ultra-conservative Sen. James Lankford, was caught on camera saying: “It’s true.” Which must be why so many Republicans thought it was hell.

Why were the Republicans so silent on these applause-line basics? The answer was sitting just above Biden’s left shoulder. Speaker Mike Johnson was performing comic pantomime instruction. All it lacked was a shouted: “Live from Washington, it’s Thursday Night Live!”

Perhaps you thought you were watching his look-alike, Stephen Colbert, reprising a more subtle Chevy Chase – eyes rolling, head shaking “no.” His flock remained seated and mostly silent.

So it was that Americans watching “Thursday Night Live” may well have witnessed the birth of the New Republican Silent Minority.

Martin Schram, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, is a veteran Washington journalist, author, and TV documentary executive. Readers may send him an email at [email protected].