So Much for the Sanctity of the Oval Office

By Noah Rothman

Thursday, July 25, 2024

 

On each of the four occasions in which Joe Biden addressed the nation from the Oval Office, press accounts of his speech described the deployment of that setting as “rare.” Duly so. Like his Democratic predecessor, Biden’s staff rarely missed an opportunity to inform reporters that they saw the Oval as a sacred place that lent profound gravity to the cause for which it was deployed. As such, it should be used sparingly.

 

Indeed, when the president addressed the nation from that setting, he did so on occasions that could fairly be considered historic. When a congressional compromise averted default on the national debt; when the attacks of October 7 yielded an “inflection point” associated with the opening of a second front in the anti-American axis’s assault on the U.S.-led world order; and when an assassin attempted to take Donald Trump’s life, Biden generally rose to the occasion. But on Wednesday night, the Oval Office served as the backdrop for an address to the nation on nothing weightier than Joe Biden’s career path. Worse, in wallowing in his own self-pity, the president used his perch behind the Resolute Desk to smuggle his defunct campaign’s themes back into the national conversation.

 

When he wasn’t mangling the prepared text — musing on the extent to which we should all “cherry” the cause of constitutional governance and stumbling over the word “convention” — Biden lingered on his own historical significance. He placed himself in the pantheon of figures ranging from Washington to Jefferson, Lincoln to Roosevelt. He described his own decision to withdraw from the race, a conclusion to which he was dragged kicking and screaming by his own party, as an epochal moment. And from this lofty vantage, Biden launched into a variety of entirely political attacks on his political opponents.

 

“America is going to have to choose between moving forward or backward, between hope and hate, between unity and division,” the president said. “Do we still believe in honesty, decency, respect, freedom, justice, and democracy?”

 

“In this moment, we can see those we disagree with not as enemies but as . . .” Here he paused, nearly uttering the word “friends,” but then caught himself and returned to the text: “I mean, fellow Americans — can we do that?” This question would be answered by voters in November, as would the one he asked next. “Does character in public life still matter?” The country’s cause, Biden reminded the nation, is his cause, “the cause of American democracy itself.”

 

The subtext became text as Biden pivoted away from addressing all Americans and, instead, spoke to his fellow Democrats. “In recent weeks, it has become clear to me that I need to unite my party in this critical endeavor,” the president added. Biden followed this by pledging his undying fealty to a litany of Democratic policy objectives he will have failed to advance to his own satisfaction when he leaves office, bequeathing those challenges to “new voices, fresh voices, yes, younger voices.” In closing, he once again endorsed Kamala Harris to succeed him in the presidency.

 

Whether the subject of last night’s Oval Office address preserves the sanctity of the setting is debatable. What is beyond dispute is that the speech was overwhelmingly political — more than that, self-serving in its advocacy for electoral outcomes preferred by Democrats.

 

“Every single network that televised this campaign speech will be getting follow-up letters from our attorneys regarding equal time,” Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita wrote in the wake of Biden’s address. He’s got a point.