In a speech earlier this month, US President Joe Biden slipped a phrase into a major address on infrastructure spending with a bit of a laugh, calling it a ‘boring’ but ‘an important speech’.
Boring but important sort of sums up the veteran Democrat’s game plan, six months after moving into the White House: focus on substance, not style, to rebuild American prosperity and restore the country to a central role in global politics.
“Biden essentially is trying to get all the emotional energy out of our politics,” Robert Rowland, a professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas, told AFP, contrasting Biden’s style to the bombast of predecessor Donald Trump.
“The long-term effect is to say: ‘Look, I may be boring but I am actually producing real results’.”
On Tuesday, when the 78-year-old Biden brought his cabinet together to mark six months in office, he reiterated some of the key themes of his presidency, which he has been hammering home since January.
