VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The mess of an address

After listening to the State of the Union address, Americans know why the latest Reuters poll has President Joe Biden at 41 percent approval.

Vice President Kamala Harris polls even lower — despite the obsequious efforts of the most biased media in history that has, in effect, merged with the Democratic Party.

The nation was reminded again why only 37 percent of Biden’s own party want him to run again. Only a quarter of Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction under his leadership.

Given all that, what could a president possibly tell a nation when he entered office inheriting a 1.4 percent inflation rate only to spike it to 7 percent? How did Americans’ 30-year mortgages of 2.7 percent soar to 6.5 percent in less than two years?

How does a president explain that eggs climbed to $7 a dozen, or a thin steak hit $15 a pound, or a sheet of plywood reached $95? How does a president explain to Americans that gas averaged $2.39 a gallon when he took office and, even after draining the strategic petroleum reserve, it is still $3.50 a gallon — and recently spiked at $5 a gallon in many states.

Can Biden explain why once affordable, or even cheap natural gas more than tripled in price in less than a year? What can a president say when in his first two years more than 5 million foreign nationals poured into the United States — all illegally across a nonexistent border?

How could Biden explain the humiliation in Afghanistan? The draining of our arsenal of key weaponry? Or the inability to take down a communist Chinese spy balloon when it first brazenly floated above America — photographing military bases and missile sites as it crossed the entire United States with impunity?

We know the answers to all these questions.

Biden simply did on Tuesday in his State of the Union address what he always does: misinform, ignore, and attack!

Misinform. After sending inflation, energy and interest rates to astronomical rates, and then seeing them momentarily taper off a bit, Biden declares that he “lowered” these indices that remain far higher than they were when he entered office.

He brags of a low unemployment rate. But Biden never discloses the better indicator of the labor participation rate that has declined under his tenure — or the fact he inherited a growing economy naturally rebounding on autopilot from a disastrous two-year COVID lockdown.

Ignore. Consider what he will never mention. China just violated international law and U.S. airspace. How did Beijing assume rightly that they so easily could get away with it?

There is no southern border. Biden destroyed it. He greenlighted more than 5 million illegal aliens to enter the United States without audit or legality — even as smuggled Mexican drugs kill 100,000 Americans each year.

He never will concede he stopped the building of the wall. He omits that he demonized innocent Border Patrol officers. He nullified the immigration laws he swore to uphold.

Biden ignores the $4 trillion he has borrowed in just two years to inflate the national debt, now on its way to more than $32 trillion this year. The middle class has bled 20 percent of their 401(k) retirement plans representing years’ worth of lost hard-earned savings.

Yet Biden promised hundreds of billions of dollars more in borrowing with no idea of how to pay back the already crushing national debt that will incur $450 billion just to service this year alone.

He never mentions that Russia went into Ukraine because Russian President Vladimir Putin saw no downside after our debacle in Afghanistan, or that Biden’s own inept remarks about not worrying over a Russia invasion of Ukraine if it just proved to be “minor” probably played some role.

Attack! Remember Biden comes to life only when he smears his enemies while calling for “unity” and “bipartisanship.” Only then his voice rises, his brow furrows and his face reddens. He claims that “the rich” avoid “paying their fair share,” even as he knows that just 1 percent of the country pays more than 40 percent of all income taxes.

Biden somehow demagogued the lethal violence of Black police officers against a Black victim in Memphis, Tennessee, into evidence of America’s supposed racism. He smeared all law enforcement — even as inner-city violent and hate crimes soared as never before.

He utterly lied about Republicans demanding a sunsetting of Social Security and Medicare.

He beat the dead horse of Jan. 6 (while insanely connecting it to the attack on Paul Pelosi!), despite the stacked congressional investigative committee and the suppression of critical video evidence and email communications involving security lapses.

In sum, it was the same old, same old dishonest Biden: misinform, ignore, and attack — and then call for “unity,” as the country collectively slides into ruin.

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and a classicist and historian at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Contact him at authorvdh@gmail.com.