WASHINGTON. President Joe Biden is poised to give a hopeful assessment of the state of the country, rather than making flashy political proposals, as he delivers his second State of the Union Address, seeking to overcome domestic pessimism and fears about his own leadership.

His speech to a politically divided Congress came Tuesday night as the nation struggles to make sense of the tangle of cross currents at home and abroad — economic uncertainty, the debilitating war in Ukraine, rising tensions with China among them — and cautiously assesses Biden’s suitability. for a likely bid for re-election.

The President will take the floor of the House of Representatives at a time when only a quarter of US adults think the country is moving in the right direction, according to a new poll from the Associated Press-NORC Public Affairs Research Center. About three quarters say that everything is going the wrong way. And most Democrats don’t want Biden to run for another term.

Biden will seek to confront those sentiments directly, while at the same time trying not to appear indifferent to American concerns, aides said.

Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, said Biden would “recognize and meet Americans where they are,” adding that their “economic anxieties are real.”

“I think the main message is that we should make more progress, but people should be optimistic,” he added.

READ MORE: Here’s what you need to know ahead of Biden’s State of the Union address

Historian of Chapman University President Luke Nichter said the closest analogy to Biden’s current circumstances may be the 1960s, when global uncertainty met internal turmoil. According to him, Biden has the opportunity to “calm down” the country.

“Usually we’re looking for an agenda: ‘Here’s what he’s planning to do.’ I’m not sure it’s real,” Nichter said. “I think Americans’ expectations of what Congress is actually going to achieve is pretty low. And so I think right now the sentiment and the tone, and helping Americans feel better about their circumstances, I think will go a long way.”

The setting for Biden’s speech will be markedly different from what it was a year ago, when staunch Democratic Party supporter Nancy Pelosi sat behind him as speaker. She was replaced by Speaker of the Republican House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy, and it’s unclear what kind of reception the troubled Republican will give the Democratic president.

Now that COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted, the White House and lawmakers from both parties are inviting guests to deliver political messages in the House of Representatives. The parents of Tyre Nichols, who was severely beaten by police in Memphis and later died, are among those expected to be in the hall.

Biden is changing his mind after spending the first two years pushing through big bills like the bipartisan infrastructure package, the high-tech manufacturing promotion bill and climate laws. With Republicans now in control of the House of Representatives, Biden has focused on implementing big laws and getting voters to thank him for improvements, rather than developing big new initiatives.

Much as needed. Biden is facing a newly empowered Republican Party that is eager to undo many of his achievements and vows to do a plethora of investigations, including examining recent discoveries of classified documents from his time as vice president at his home and former office.

At the same time, Biden will need to find a way to work across the aisle to raise the federal debt limit by this summer and keep the government funded. Biden insisted that he would not negotiate to meet the country’s debt obligations; Republicans were just as adamant that Biden should make concessions on spending.

On the eve of President McCarthy’s speech, he urged Biden to sit down at the negotiating table with Republicans in the House of Representatives to cut spending as part of a deal to raise the national debt ceiling.

“Mr. President, time to get to work,” McCarthy said from the speaker’s balcony at the Capitol.

While hopes for large-scale bipartisan cooperation are low, Biden was about to reissue his call to Congress in 2022 to support his “unity program” of action against the opioid epidemic, mental health, veterans’ health and cancer control.

The speech comes days after Biden ordered the military to shoot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon that brazenly flew over the country, captivating the nation and serving as a reminder of tensions between the two world powers.

Last year’s address came just days after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, and just as many in the West doubted Kyiv’s ability to withstand the onslaught. Over the past year, the United States and other allies have sent tens of billions of dollars in military and economic aid to bolster Ukraine’s defenses. Now Biden must justify – both at home and abroad – support for this coalition while the war drags on.

“The President will really want to build on the significant achievement that has already been made and then emphasize how much more remains to be done, how committed we are to this, and how we will be asking the US Congress for a bipartisanship. join us in this work,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Monday.

While COVID-19 has weakened at home, Biden will turn his attention to other national woes, including a deadly opioid epidemic, gun violence and police abuse.

The president spent most of Monday’s weekend reviewing speech drafts with aides at the presidential residence at Camp David in Maryland.

White House Senior Counsel Anita Dunn will address the general themes of Biden’s speech to Democratic lawmakers throughout the day Tuesday, beginning with a breakfast with House Democrats on Capitol Hill.

McCarthy urged Biden to support Republican efforts to put the country’s finances on a balanced budget path, which would require deep and politically unpopular federal spending cuts that Biden and Democrats have fiercely resisted.

“We must move towards a balanced budget and insist on being truly accountable for every dollar we spend,” McCarthy said.

He insisted that cuts to Medicare and Social Security, popular health care and retirement programs primarily for older Americans, were “not on the table” in any budget talks. The GOP leader also said that “defaulting our debt is not an option.”

The White House has insisted that Republicans cannot be trusted to protect programs and criticized Republicans for “threatening to actively throw our economy into a tailspin in the event of a default” by imposing conditions on a debt limit.