Ukraine’s ambassador had a prime seat for President Biden’s State of the Union address Tuesday, with an invitation to sit next to first lady Jill Biden and accept the accolades of an enthusiastic Congress.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Mr. Biden told Oksana Markarova as Mrs. Biden reached across social-distanced empty seats to give the ambassador a hug.
Ms. Markarova was the highlight of Mr. Biden’s guests, who also included Intel’s CEO, a 7th-grade student from Virginia who suffers from diabetes, and Danielle Robinson, a military widow whose husband died of cancer believed to have been contracted from burn pits in Iraq.
Mr. Biden said it’s possible the same thing happened to his son, Beau Biden, who developed brain cancer and died in 2015.
“We don’t know for sure if a burn pit was the cause of his brain cancer, or the diseases of so many of our troops. But I’m committed to finding out everything we can,” the president said, promising new health care eligibility for veterans suffering respiratory cancers.
Pioneered by President Reagan, the use of guests to punctuate parts of major speeches to Congress has become an art form.
Tuesday marked Mr. Biden’s first crack at the performance — his address last year came amid severe coronavirus restrictions, and no guests were present — and he fell short of what his predecessors managed.
“State of the Union addresses are sometimes remembered for the invited guests, but that will certainly not be the case tonight,” said Aaron Kall, director of debate at the University of Michigan and author and editor of two books on presidential addresses to Congress.
“This could also be another casualty of the political polarization that grips the United States. Since the presence of the guests often represents a certain political position, universal acclaim may be impossible in this current environment,” said Mr. Kall.
While mask requirements were lifted just days ago for Congress, freeing attendees to ditch face coverings, social distancing was still enforced, limiting the number of announced guests that could sit with Mrs. Biden to nine.
Mr. Kall said Mr. Biden would have been hard-pressed to cram more guest mentions into his hour-long speech anyway.
He suggested Mr. Biden was smart to recognize the Ukrainian ambassador early in his speech, but the rest of the guest list was pushed to later.
“There were less overall guests than I would have predicted early in the evening. This is the most important time to include them since many viewers eventually tune-out,” Mr. Kall said.
He said Joshua Davis, the 13-year-old Virginia boy with Type 1 diabetes, was “probably the most persuasive guest given his age and story.”
Meanwhile, Ms. Robinson, the widow, didn’t achieve the same amount of applause that Carryn Owens, widow of a Navy SEAL killed in a raid in Yemen in early 2017, garnered in President Trump’s first address to a joint session.
“I think the energy level triggered by the introduction of the guests was much lower than we’ve previously seen — especially during the Trump presidency,” Mr. Kall said. “Carryn Owens received an ovation that seemed to last for several minutes and it was the highlight of President Trump’s 2017 speech. In a public opinion sense, this was a highlight of the Trump administration and even liberal commentators said it was the night Trump became president.”
Mr. Trump’s mastery of the State of the Union guest list continued with his 2018 surprise, a North Korean defector, and his 2019 performance, which included veterans of D-Day and history-making NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin.
A year later, in 2020, Mr. Trump used his address to host one of the Tuskegee airmen and surprised Rush Limbaugh with the Medal of Freedom.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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