State of the Union offers reset for Trump
WASHINGTON • President Donald Trump will deliver his first State of the Union address Tuesday at a juncture of opportunity and peril for his presidency, and his anxious allies hope he will show he has the ability to do something he has not done before: bring the country together.
White House officials have offered few details of what Trump will say other than that he will take credit for a healthier economy and tie its continued growth to the Republicans’ new tax plan, as well as argue his case on immigration, trade, infrastructure and national security.
In tone, they say, it will not be like the fiery populist inaugural address, in which Trump offered a dark picture of “American carnage.” A senior administration official who has been involved in the drafting promised “a speech that resonates with our American values and unites us with patriotism.”
With its bumper-sticker-ready theme of “building a safe, strong and proud America,” the address is expected to resemble the vision of a “renewal of the American spirit” that Trump offered in his well-received speech to a joint session of Congress last February. It also will come on the heels of the pragmatic, upbeat speech he delivered Friday to a skeptical audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
It will be an incongruous picture the American public sees Tuesday night: a divisive chief executive, who has discarded countless norms, performing one of the most traditional of presidential rituals — an hour or so during which, uninterrupted and unfiltered, he can claim ownership for his accomplishments and set an agenda for the year ahead.
Democrats, meanwhile, have chosen Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy, a charismatic new political star who has a universally known family name, to give their official response.
The larger question is whether Trump can expand his appeal beyond his ardent base to reach the majority of Americans who are responsible for his historically poor job-approval ratings.
“Coming off the tax cuts and the trip to Switzerland, he’s in a position to be very presidential, and my hope is he will speak as the leader of the country and would offer a series of proposals that would bring us together,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump adviser and defender. “I don’t think this year he needs to speak to part of America. He needs to speak as president.”
The stakes for his party are high as Republicans approach an election season with Democrats increasingly bullish about their prospects of winning back one or both houses of Congress. That would break the Republican lock on power in Washington, thwart the president’s ability to enact his agenda and imperil a second Trump term.