Nib #13: Biden’s Botched SOTU, Part 3: Show, Don’t Tell

Writing perorations — the typically uplifting, closing sections of speeches — is hard. For State of the Union Addresses — with so many chefs (of varying skill) in the kitchen — history suggests it’s nearly impossible.

So, that President Joe Biden’s 2024 SOTU ended poorly is neither surprising nor especially damning. But the comprehensiveness of his peroration’s failure is worth young writers’ attention.

Here is the relevant text, 176 words at the end of a 6,000-word speech.

“To lead America, the land of possibilities, you need a vision for the future of what America can and should be. Tonight you’ve heard mine.

“I see a future where we defend democracy not diminish it. I see a future where we restore the right to choose and protect other freedoms not take them away. I see a future where the middle class finally has a fair shot and the wealthy finally have to pay their fair share in taxes. I see a future where we save the planet from the climate crisis and our country from gun violence.

“Above all, I see a future for all Americans! I see a country for all Americans! And I will always be a president for all Americans! Because I believe in America! I believe in you the American people.

“You’re the reason I’ve never been more optimistic about our future! So let’s build that future together! Let’s remember who we are! We are the United States of America. There is nothing beyond our capacity when we act together!”

It starts off okay. A leader needs a vision — this is mine. No muss, no fuss. Honestly, Biden would have done well to end the speech right there. Instead, his speechwriters proceed to commit three-and-a-half totally unforced errors that clunk and clang down through the text like the stone Pippen tosses into the Moria well in The Fellowship of the Ring.

Each of these mistakes deserves its own Nib. So this week, we’ll just take up just the first rake the SOTU speechwriters stepped on.

SOTU Peroration Fail #1: “I see a…”

If you’ve ever taken a creative writing course, you’ve probably heard the maxim, “show, don’t tell.” Good writing does not comment on the things it renders, it just renders them. The goal is to put clear, concrete images in the audience’s mind that evoke an idea, not to describe the idea. As Richard Pryce put it: “You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road.”

By contrast, most of Biden’s SOTU peroration is commentary about his vision rather than the vision itself. “I see a future where we defend democracy … where we restore the right to choose… where we save the planet,” etc.

These platitudes are not Biden’s vision; they are more like what a pundit would say about Biden’s vision.

If the White House really wanted to go this “vision” route — a dubious proposition, as we’ll see — he should have described a personal, concrete future “where every voter is safe from bullying and fraud, where every woman is free to choose her path in life, where every child breathes clean air and learns at a safe school,” etc, etc.

The president should have shown his vision for the country in more specific detail, not told us about it in vague generalities.

Instead, his speechwriters indulged in “speechifying” — drafting rhetoric that superficially feels like the kind of thing John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King would have said, but aims only at the rhetoric’s affect and so falls short of the original’s substance, clarity, and force.

The lesson for young writers? Every first draft you ever write will include missteps like this — where you tell rather than show, where you comment on your argument instead of just making it. The trick is editing and revising your work with eyes and ears peeled for it.

Until next week — when we’ll dive into Biden’s second SOTU peroration fail — keep writing!

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Nib #140 Write in Paragraphs

September 11, 2026

Rule #13 in Strunk & White still holds: “Make the paragraph the unit of composition.” Don’t think of your writing as a collection of words or even sentences, but paragraphs. Each paragraph should present One Complete Thought — one idea, one step in the story you’re telling or the argument you’re making. Paragraphs signal all this simply by how they look. The line break and indentation tell the reader, We’re done with the previous idea and moving on to a new one. Take advantage of those visual cues as you draft and revise your work. Open paragraphs with some kind of topic sentence to tee up what follows. Close them with a good kicker that polishes off the point or springboards readers into the next paragraph. You can even outline your piece this way — plan one paragraph for each main point in your outline. Readers read in paragraphs, so writers should write in paragraphs too. Until next week… keep writing.

Nib #139 Duplicate Sentences

September 4, 2026

When writing first drafts, writers are usually still working out what we think. One result is duplicate sentences. We unconsciously state the same thought in different ways, often back to back. Just like the two previous sentences! Or consider these examples: This bill will only raise taxes on people making more than $1 million per year. It won’t raise taxes on anyone making less than seven figures. The hotel was farther from the city than we expected. We were surprised by how long it took to get downtown. This kind of repetition is natural in conversation. But good writing doesn’t ask readers to pay for the same real estate twice. When editing your writing, be on the lookout for twin sentences. Pick the one that sounds best, or take the best from each to form a better one, and delete the rest. Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #138 Dr. X and Mrs. Y

August 28, 2026

The hardest part of writing about public policy is making substantive arguments without getting lost in the weeds. Disagreements over policy minutiae in a speech or op-ed have reduced more than one congressional office to a Hobbesian state of nature. So here are two tips for finding the right balance between wonkiness and accessibility. Tip #1 : Ask yourself who your audience is. If they are experts, then write wonky. If they’re laymen, make the language more accessible. If the answer is somewhere in between, Tip #2 is that when you have to write for both, write to both. Think of your audience as two particular people: Dr. X, a world-renowned expert on your topic, and Mrs. Y, a smart, educated, and curious layman. Set your tone, choose your words and emphases, and present your argument and evidence in such a way that it won’t bore Dr. X or bewilder Mrs. Y. Provide enough context so non-experts can follow along, but not so much that experts will feel their intelligence insulted. If you can connect with both Dr. X and Mrs. Y, you’ll connect with everyone in between them too. Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #137 Write to an Audience

August 21, 2026

One of the most powerful writing tips anyone can learn is to never just write . Always write to an audience . Before you write word one, before you even outline your composition, clarify in your mind, as specifically as you can, who your reader is. Is it your teacher? Your boss, coworker, or subordinate? A friend, sibling, or parent? A romantic prospect? A business, nonprofit, or government agency? If your audience is a group of people, what kind of people? Are they religious? Educated? Wealthy or poor? Idealistic or cynical? Young or old? Male or female? Conservative or progressive? Knowledgeable or unfamiliar with the topic? If you were talking with these people, you would adjust your tone, word choice, and sentence structure based on who they are. Do the same with your writing. If you want to connect with your audience, you have to know who they are and how they think. Take the time to figure that out before you start writing. It will make your drafting smoother and your drafts better, guaranteed. Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #136 Proofread Backwards

August 14, 2026

The biggest challenge of editing our own writing is that we know what we meant to say. When we read our own drafts, our brains fill in gaps and “correct” mistakes, tricking us into seeing what we intended to write rather than what’s really on the page. One way to overcome this is to proofread backwards . If you’re working on draft three or four and are starting to get too familiar with the text to see it clearly, try reading the sentences in reverse order. Start with the last sentence, then read the next-to-last, and so on until you reach your intro. Proofing backwards breaks the logical flow of the writing, so you can consider each sentence in isolation. You’ll still need to edit forward for structure, coherence, and flow, of course. But once the forest is in good shape and you’re down to the trees or the leaves — typos, extra words, stray punctuation — proofing backwards is a great way to look at your own work with fresh eyes. Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #135 That AI Writing Column

August 7, 2026

The Nib this week is simple: read Bret Stephens’s New York Times column, “I’m Begging You: Never Write with AI." For those on this side of the paywall, Stephens’s argument is not about the quality and inauthenticity of AI writing. Rather, it’s about what we lose — as thinkers and as people — when we outsource our writing to a machine. “The problem with writing with A.I. is that it’s mentally enfeebling — an escalator toward a result when you really need to make a daily habit of taking the stairs. As it becomes ubiquitous, it undermines not only our individual ability to write but also a society’s collective ability to reason, a culture’s inner capacity to create and everyone’s reason to care.” The task of writing: “compels us to subject our thinking to the effort of articulation, the rigor of grammar, the tests of intelligibility and coherence, the inspection of others.” Writing requires clear, disciplined thinking. That’s one reason it’s so hard. It can no more be outsourced than healthy eating or daily exercise. “We become better writers,” Stephens says, “by the constant effort that mundane writing demands.” Read the whole thing. Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #134 Smart Writers’ Kryptonite

July 31, 2026

Smart writers have a weakness for overcomplicated sentences. The more ideas a writer can hold in his head, the harder it can be to present them in a reader-friendly way. If you ever find yourself writing or editing a sentence that feels overstuffed, stop and ask yourself, What is this sentence’s job? Most sentences perform one of three tasks: Saying what something is or is not. Saying what something is or is not like. Saying what something caused or was caused by. Once you decide which job the sentence needs to do, rewrite it as a simple independent clause doing that job and nothing else. Add back only what is necessary to express that one thought. Leave the next thought for the next sentence. If you’re having trouble connecting all your dots in one sentence, use two or three. Your readers will appreciate it. Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #133 Another Phrase You Can Always Delete

July 24, 2026

This week, another addition to the Nib’s list of phrases writers should always delete from their work: “In today’s world…” First of all, it’s just a longer way of saying “today” or “nowadays” or “these days.” And writers should always look to trim extraneous words. Second, the phrase is clunky. No confident human being in relaxed conversation ever says “in today’s world.” It’s the kind of thing we write when we are insecure and trying to fake it. Be confident. Be relaxed. Don’t let “in today’s world…” survive past your first draft. Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #132 Stop Goofing “Around”

July 17, 2026

At some point in the last two decades, around became the monster that ate the other prepositions. Every day we read of “debates around immigration” and “plans around the weekend” and “coordination around fundraising.” Good writers have to fight back. Around is a perfectly good word. But it means around. It does not mean about , regarding , for , toward , with , over , on , or to . The problem isn’t grammar; it’s clarity. When one word tries to do the work of half a dozen others, communication breaks down. Writing gets sloppy and readers get confused. Luckily, there’s an easy fix. Young writers who grew up amidst the Great Aroundening should make around a yellow-flag word, like that or issue . Every time you read it in your own work, pause and ask whether another preposition would better capture the relationship you're trying to describe. Prepositional precision may seem like nitpicking. It’s not. It can mean the difference between a clear sentence and a fuzzy one, a fluid paragraph and a clanging one, and a writing sample that earns an interview instead of a rejection. Always go the extra mile for your readers, not around them. Until next week… keep writing!

Nib #131 Use These 5 Powerful Words

July 10, 2026

The trick to persuasive writing is that you have to change readers’ minds without putting them on the defensive for not agreeing with you in the first place. A great way to make arguments more palatable without watering them down is by using five humble but rhetorically powerful words: “It seems to me that…” Consider these three claims: City life is better than country life. Tax cuts boost economic growth. Yogi Berra was better than Johnny Bench. Now compare them to these: It seems to me that city life is better than country life. It seems to me that tax cuts boost economic growth. It seems to me that Yogi Berra was better than Johnny Bench. The assertions remain the same. But see how open and gracious the sentences become? Now imagine you prefaced each with a fact or two backing up the claim. All of a sudden, you have a confident, forceful argument that nonetheless draws your audience in by proposing rather than imposing your conclusion. When backed by evidence, humility and generosity are much more persuasive than swagger. “It seems to me that…” invites your audience to agree with you, which is the surest way to get them to yes. Until next week… keep writing!