President Biden’s first State of the Union speech will take place two weeks from today. Yesterday former Obama adviser David Axelrod offered President Biden some unsolicited advice on what to say to the country during that speech. The focus of that advice was the need for “humility” at a time when Americans are not yet ready to celebrate.

Mr. President, proceed with caution. Talk about the things you and Congress have done to help meet the challenges Americans are facing, for sure. Lay out your goals for the future, absolutely. Offer realistic hope for better days ahead. We desperately need it. But recognize that we are still in the grips of a national trauma. Polls show that the vast majority of Americans believe we are on the wrong track, and people will have little patience for lavish claims of progress that defy their lived experiences.

Even if we are, objectively, in a stronger position than we were a year ago — closer to the end of this ordeal than the beginning — Americans are not celebrating. Millions have lost loved ones; many continue to struggle with the effects of the virus. Kids lost valuable time in the classroom, and parents have struggled to cope. Health care workers are in crisis. And we all have felt the profound cost of our relative isolation, away from family and friends, offices and colleagues.

Unsurprisingly, incidents of suicide, drug overdose deaths and violence in our homes and on the streets have grown dramatically. Frustrations with masks, mandates and shifting rules have deepened our political divides. Jobs have come roaring back, raising wages. But those wage increases have been eaten up by inflation, the likes of which we have not seen in four decades.

Axelrod is on to something here. A speech full of self-praise for economic progress and government COVID guidance is likely to be seen as extremely tone deaf almost the moment it’s given. He is warning Biden against letting the SOTU become a “Mission Accomplished” moment that could look worse and worse by November.

But there’s a danger in going too far in the other direction, Axelrod warns. If Biden comes across as too downbeat, the speech could be seen as a repeat of Jimmy Carter’s 1979 “malaise” speech.

Amid an energy crisis that triggered sprawling gas lines in 1979, President Jimmy Carter gave a remarkably introspective televised address in which he discussed the “crisis of confidence” that had gripped the nation and called for sacrifice to change our energy future. It became known as the “malaise speech,” though Mr. Carter never actually used that word. And while it briefly lifted his standing, his stark address, coupled with the firing of several Cabinet members a few days later, ultimately deepened the political crisis he was facing.

You could probably sum up Axelrod’s advice as seeking a safe middle ground between the extremes. Be optimistic but don’t get ahead of yourself. A cynic might even say that the advice boils down to a metaphor for a beginning bowler. Don’t worry about rolling a strike, just try to stay out of the gutters. Probably pretty good advice for a president whose polling is stuck around 40 percent.

But at the Washington Post, Greg Sargent offers a different perspective. He says the bad polling for Democrats means it’s time to change up the narrative about Biden’s economic success:

With inflation and supply chain woes darkening perceptions of the overall recovery, some Democrats seem skittish about emphasizing its positive aspects. The theory seems to be that, if the spending in the recovery act is partly to blame for downsides such as inflation, voters will punish them for not flagellating themselves over this.

But as Paul Krugman argues, that’s a lopsided conception of the situation. We have to ask whether we might be worse off today if we had lower inflation but hadn’t taken aggressive steps to help millions of struggling people and to jolt the economy out of paralysis created by a generational public health emergency.

Indeed, with Republicans (and media coverage) hammering at inflation daily, being overly skittish about making this case means voters will hear only one side of that story.

“Is inflation higher than we wanted?” says Rosenberg. “Yeah, but what’s the alternative? Slower growth? We did the right thing. We have to defend it.”

I can’t say I envy Democrats their choices right now. On the one hand, I think Axelrod is correct that claiming the economy is a raging success is likely to backfire both immediately and for the rest of the year as inflation remains high. On the other hand, Sargent is right that if Democrats don’t even argue the point about the economy then they are effectively giving up on the midterms and conceding to the current view that the GOP could do better. They really don’t have any good choices.

On top of all of that, the SOTU is meant to be a place to make promises about all of the wonderful new legislations the party wants to advance. But as we all know, Biden’s agenda is stalled in the Senate by Democrats. So he can’t promise much. He also can’t complain much without further annoying the two Senators he would need to make progress. Maybe he can promise to erase some student debt but beyond that I’m not sure what he can actually deliver.

The worst part is that no matter what he does, it probably won’t change his approval rating much:

Gallup has measured presidential job approval ratings both before and after State of the Union speeches since 1978 (for a total of 35, not including the addresses before a joint session of Congress that newly elected presidents gave in their first year in office¹). If you look at the difference between those pre- and post-speech approval ratings, the State of the Union has produced an average approval-rating bump of … 0.2 percent. In fact, a president has been just as likely to see his approval rating decrease as increase: 15 speeches have produced an approval rating bump, while 15 have yielded a decline (the remaining five effected no change at all).

In two weeks Biden will be walking into a minefield but even if he walks out unharmed he won’t be any better off than he is now.