“My purpose tonight,” bawled President Biden as he launched into his fourth State of the Union address, “is to both wake up this Congress, and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment either.” Then, after likening himself to FDR, the 46th president proceeded to deliver a soporific in which he allowed as “how freedom and democracy are under assault here at home to a degree not seen since the Civil War.”

We took that as the opening jab at President Trump, whom the Democrats are trying to convince the country will, if he is elected to a second term, spell the end of democracy in America. Voters watching at home had to pinch themselves to recall that the signal effort the administration has been making on behalf of democracy at home has been to block the Republican front runner from being allowed to appear on the ballots.

As for the threat to democracy overseas, Mr. Biden boasted of how President Reagan, a Republican, challenged the Soviet Union ‘s leader to dismantle the Berlin Wall. He quoted Reagan’s famous line, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Only problem is that — as was pointed out by Quin Hillyer in the Washington Examiner — at the time, Mr. Biden mocked and derided Reagan’s speech in Berlin as dangerous warmongering.

What struck us during Mr. Biden’s speech, though, was the failure to offer a coherent vision of his — or any — foreign policy. What is the Biden doctrine for which he is seeking funding from Congress? On the one hand, he’s pursued articles of appeasement in respect of Iran. He’s been trying to stymie the Jewish state from its just war against Hamas. Yet he poses as a strong backer of Ukraine while extending an olive branch to Communist China.

“My message to President Putin is simple,” Mr. Biden boomed. “We will not walk away. We will not bow down. I will not bow down. History is watching.” Oh, but as we often say, History has her tricks to play. She, after all, was also watching when Mr. Biden voted in the Senate to abandon Free Vietnam. When the Obama administration quit the war in Iraq. And when Mr. Biden himself surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban.

On the economy, Mr. Biden was even less convincing than on foreign policy. “I inherited an economy that was on the brink,” he declared. “Now our economy is the envy of the world.” If it was on the brink, though, it was because of the Covid pandemic. Many of the gains of which Mr. Biden boasts in respect of his own years in office were bounces back from the Covid losses. And were paid for with borrowing under which Americans will stagger for decades.

Mr. Biden offered no coherent discussion of the most mendacious feature of the Bidenomics — inflation. “Wages keep going up and inflation keeps coming down,” he declared. “Inflation has dropped from 9 percent  to 3 percent, the lowest in the world.” The fact is that at 3 percent, inflation is 50 percent higher than the target set — without any say-so from Congress — by the Federal Reserve. Never mind that its target of 2 percent is too high to begin with.

It happens that as Mr. Biden was preparing his speech, we were across the street from the Capitol at the Library of Congress, where the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation was hosting a conference on “America in Debt.” It turned out to be  a serious and civil, bipartisan discussion of the burden our country has taken on in the age of fiat money. How nice it would have been to hear such talk by the President — or any president.

Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address is being touted as the opening of his campaign in the general election. We’re not making book at the moment on the outcome of that campaign. We are, though, looking forward to seeing whether, and how, Mr. Trump will take on the particulars. Our search of the transcript indicates that Mr. Biden didn’t once mention the word “growth.” So he has left his predecessor plenty of room to maneuver in the coming contest.