This is the Libertarian Podcast from the Hoover Institution. I'm your host Tom Church and I'm joined as always by the

Libertarian Professor Richard Epstein. Richard is the Peter and Kirsten Bedford

Senior Fellow here at the Hoover Institution. He's the Lawrence A Tish Professor of Law at

NYU and is a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. Now Richard, it is that time of

the year where many of us wish that the State of the Union would be sent as a written

report and not delivered as a one hour and 12 minute speech like it was last night.

I think President Biden's theme was look at how much things have improved since I took office.

I think at this point we can we can look over President Biden's record and see that inflation is falling, unemployment's under 3.5%.

We popped a Chinese surveillance balloon.

And yet, his approval rating is only 44%.

So how do you figure out that his approval reigns 44% and yet he's boasting about his record.

Would you expect to see a bump in his ratings after the speech?

I'm probably going in the opposite direction.

I think it was a pretty weak speech.

I mean, I think he did exactly the right thing,

is that you have stuff which is positive,

you have stuff which is negative.

You talk about the positives and you ignore the negatives.

There are some issues in which you hope to be able to form a coalition

and there are others which will break it.

So you emphasize the former rather than the latter. Coalition and there are others which will break it.

So you emphasize the former rather than the latter.

...