JOHN PODHORETZ: According to Joe Biden, everything is going great.

The crisis in Ukraine changed that somewhat, because it has given his presidency a new purpose and direction. But you could see the outlines of the effort to change gears in the surprising passage about policing, in which he made a slight feint toward a Sister Souljah moment in taking on his own radicals.

He spoke movingly about the two young NYPD officers shot in cold blood in January and then insisted that “we should all agree: the answer is not to ‘defund the police.’ The answer is to FUND the police with the resources and training they need to protect our communities.”

Even so, you can tell that Joe Biden thinks his presidency is going swimmingly. His words weren’t defensive. They were triumphalist. He even seemed to promise he would bring the opioid epidemic to an end and, for good measure, would also end cancer “as we know it.”

The immodesty of these ambitions, as we stumble out of the COVID era into an uncertain future in which the dollars in our pocket are worth less every week while Europe faces a continental war and a potential refugee flood of colossal size, had a somewhat delusional aspect.

We’re in an unprecedented crisis abroad, following our unprecedented health crisis over the past two years and an inflationary spiral we haven’t seen the like of in four decades.

Maybe we should, you know, focus on those things.

As someone Steve linked to last night in his drunkblog noted, “This speech sounds like it was written by pollsters — politically terrified pollsters.“