Joe Biden leans, once more, on the tent pole address

With his own party divided and universities engulfed in increasingly confrontational protests over the war in Gaza, President Joe Biden will deliver a major address on Tuesday that advisers hope will demonstrate that he can bring moral clarity to the unrest.

But the speech will also test a rhetorical style and approach to presidential communication that even allies worry doesn’t always resonate best with voters.

For much of his presidency, Biden has eschewed some of the traditional tools of the bully pulpit — extended news conferences and sit down interviews with major news outlets — in favor of the tentpole address: a speech designed to reframe the debate with a grand statement. He has done so on topics ranging from voting rights to race relations to the future of democracy, and, on Tuesday, antisemitism.

The go-big approach is driven, in part, by a belief among aides and advisers that Biden does not need to be overly reactive to hyperactive news cycles, and that optimal impact comes when he is positioned above the fray. But it is not universally beloved inside the White House. Aides have grumbled that the rhetorical flourishes — often with input from historian Jon Meacham — are too lofty for ordinary listeners; they don’t sound much like classic Scranton Joe.

Biden has been known to order staff to put his speeches into more “plain-speaking” English, according to three people familiar with the directives.

There is also fear among Democrats that Biden’s more spectral presence in the daily news cycle has left the White House vulnerable to criticism that the president is not an active player in the major debates of the day. Biden’s speech on voting rights, delivered in early 2022, came amid immense pressure from African American activists to embrace a change of the Senate filibuster rules to pass legislation. As a candidate for the White House, he similarly took criticism for being late to respond to the Black Lives Matter protests before delivering a high-profile address in Kenosha.

While Biden’s aides condemned the recent violence that broke out at some college campuses, he himself had largely not commented about the rise of pro-Palestinian protests until the pressure became insurmountable. Tuesday’s address was the originally planned vehicle for having him enter the conversation in a substantial way. But he and his team concluded last Thursday that they couldn’t wait that long — so he went before the cameras then.

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates objected to the characterization of internal disagreement over Biden's speech style and noted that the president "is speaking out against the scourge of Antisemitism with the seriousness this moral crisis deserves. He has also done over 30 interviews this year alone.”

Biden, on Tuesday, is expected to speak to the horrors of the Holocaust and the Oct. 7 attack as well as the “alarming rise in antisemitism in the U.S.,” according to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

While the speech will be viewed through the lens of the recent campus protests, Biden is expected to repeat his condemnation of antisemitism, both on college campuses and more broadly. He’s also expected to address the policy goals of the federal government’s first national strategy on antisemitism, which rolled out nearly a year ago. Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a close Biden ally, predicted the president would spell out “a clear commitment to using every tool the federal government has to combat actions that are hateful, and that are violative of the core principles of our country.”

While Tuesday’s speech was written without meaningful contributions from Meacham, who doubles as an informal Biden adviser, some allies still expect it to have the sweeping, historical themes typical of an address he helps write; specifically around the perniciousness of antisemitism.

“This is the bread and butter of what Joe Biden knows how to do,” said Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. “What would be important for him to underscore is that antisemitism isn’t simply a concern just for the Jewish community. It is also this insidious conspiracy theory that fundamentally undercuts safety of all communities and our democracy.”

All presidents rely on the bully pulpit and loft of a presidential address to take big swings at complex social issues. But for the Biden White House, the grand set-piece speeches take on more importance, largely because he does fewer of the day-to-day interactions to shape a message than most of his predecessors. They also often come after the issue has been simmering long enough that they’ve nearly boiled over.

Biden has done more quick, informal Q&As with reporters than any recent president except Donald Trump, according to Martha Joynt Kumar, a political science professor emerita who tracks such interactions. However, some of those interactions have amounted to seconds on the tarmac as the president is entering Air Force One — not always a practical moment for nuanced communication.

Biden’s speech on Tuesday will take place amid a host of tension points: an elusive ceasefire deal in Gaza, Israeli’s authorization of a Rafah invasion, a deepening campus protest culture and growing Democratic angst about a chaotic summer harming his reelection bid.

While campaign officials point to polls that consistently show that the war in Gaza does not register high among Americans’ concerns, the scenes of tumult across the campuses have sparked worries of further alienating young progressives and potentially upsetting swing voters. But they’ve also triggered anger from some Democrats who believe more condemnation of the protests is necessary.

“There are lessons from Charlottesville. It was more comfortable for Democrats when they saw the antisemitism of the right — Aryan men with Tiki torches,” said Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.). “Now that it’s on our side it’s not as comfortable, is it? We’re watching the tribalness and the partisanship of today play into this.”

Each president since 1993 has delivered a keynote address at the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s Days of Remembrance event, and this year marks the first time Biden will participate as president. Speaker Mike Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will also participate. Traditionally, speakers keep a narrow focus on the Holocaust and the suffering of the Jewish people, with little emphasis on other events.

The U.S. Holocaust Museum has hosted the memorial annually since the Jimmy Carter administration.