Opinion | Biden’s State of the Union gets a lift from Marjorie Taylor Greene as he keeps playing his haters for fools

Joe Biden should send Marjorie Taylor Greene roses for Valentine’s Day.

On Tuesday night, the U.S. president delivered his State of the Union speech. Biden was lucid, combative and on point. This stunned critics who keep arguing he’s in the advanced stages of dementia and must now believe one of his dogs is president.

Before the speech, MTG, as the Georgia representative brands herself, roamed the corridors and citadel of American democracy with a big white balloon like a toddler at a county fair. This was a statement about the Chinese spy balloon recently shot down, even if her message was unclear: She’s holding the balloon. Is she a Chinese spy?

Her helium prop did accomplish one thing: it helped lift Biden to a great night.

With enemies like this, who needs friends?

It’s not that Biden rose to the level of Churchill on Tuesday. It’s more that the far-right kooks across the aisle stooped to the level of an Andy Kaufman stunt. These babbling ideologues, their brains scrambled by the centrifugal force of their partisan silos, didn’t arrive for the State of the Union — they came for a State of the Unhinged.

I bet Lauren Boebert practised booing before the speech while applying lipstick in a mirror the shape of an AR-15. Andy Ogles probably spent the afternoon rehearsing his childish taunts — “It’s your fault!” — while sticking pins in his Biden voodoo doll.

Cue the performative theatrics.

As Biden started talking, fringe Republicans were primed to hiss and jeer.

At one point, MTG, her face twisted into a creepy fury smile, shouted, “Liar!”

We can detour in two ways right now. We can lament the state of politics, on both sides of the border, and long for the days of civilized discourse and respectful debate. We can peer into a crystal ball and predict a time in which U.S. elected leaders merge with the MMA and future State of the Unions are pay-per-view steel cage matches in which libs and cons punch and kick the living daylights out of one another.

Or we can just marvel at how “ole senile” Joe keeps playing his haters for fools.

Biden has been yammering on about bipartisanship since “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was in theatres. But now that he realizes the cuckoos have taken over the GOP asylum, he’s added a new therapeutic strategy: bait and jab the unhinged.

I couldn’t believe what I was watching on Tuesday night. If I were one of Biden’s speech writers, I would have doubled over in hysterics while popping the cork on a magnum of Veuve Clicquot: Are these dipsticks really falling into our trap?

As MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough wondered: “Why is my former party so stupid?”

Biden could have extolled the virtues of vitamins and MTG would have jumped up to scowl and give a dramatic thumbs-down: “Riboflavin is for communists!”

Have you ever seen a photo in which she’s sitting in her office and quietly reading a proposed bill? Have you ever watched a video in which she comes across as reasonable and motivated by the greater good? Or does what you’ve seen of MTG thus far amount to an unintended gag reel of idiocy and conspiracy?

Biden’s approval rating has struggled to climb out of the toilet over the last year. But after Tuesday’s speech, a CNN flash poll found that 72 per cent of Americans had a positive reaction to the words coming out of his mouth. Or you could argue a majority had a negative reaction to the sophomoric antics of his goofy political assassins.

We live in an age of reflexive anger. It can almost make you nostalgic for the days of road rage. Then came air rage. If boat ownership was higher, we’d undoubtedly have water rage. I have witnessed grocery store rage. There is now school board meeting rage. Transit rage. If you banned rage from the internet, there would be like three public forums left for commenting and two would be botanical.

But … the State of the Union rage?

Biden’s greatest accomplishment on Tuesday was in claiming the role of grown-up in that joint session of Congress. I love my daughters more than life itself. But I would not entrust them with household finances or any say in snow tires because they are still children. For all the talk about how the State of the Union was “raucous,” “unprecedented” and “lacking in decorum,” it was mostly just a study in contrasts.

Biden was the adult. MTG and her clique were the bratty kids.

The State of the Union is not supposed to have the boisterous and interactive vibe of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Hey, MTG, you’re kindly asked to listen and, even if you disagree, have the maturity and restraint to not shout at the podium every time a gremlin lights off a firecracker in your prefrontal cortex. This wasn’t a theatrical performance in which audience booing and backtalk is encouraged.

But, somehow, Tuesday’s speech morphed into a Ross Petty production.

That’s why the president should send MTG flowers. Or a bouquet of balloons.

We should all be so lucky to have someone make us look so good. Joe Biden has realized he can quietly succeed by letting his most strident critics loudly fail.

It’s why he was smirking on Tuesday when he engaged with his hecklers.

It was like taking candy from crazy babies.

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