Gerald Ott of Ankeny was a high school English teacher and for 30 years a school improvement consultant for the Iowa State Education Association.

Mark your calendars for the State of the Union this Thursday, March 7. Get your TVs tuned up. Gather the kids. Sit back. See Marjorie Taylor Greene swallow her tongue. Watch Speaker Mike Johnson break his gavel. See Vice President Kamala Harris spank Jim Jordan’s Freedom Caucus. It’ll be wild.

President Joe Biden will say the state of the union is good. He’ll be right. In fact, on many fronts, the state of the union is great. The trouble is, too few voters believe that, and many are swayed by former President Donald Trump’s preposterous claims or the hypnotic trance he’s placed them in.

Mike Allen and Alex Thompson wrote in Axios on February 19,

Biden officials see next month’s State of the Union address as a big, public reset moment — a chance to overcome or at least neutralize concerns about President Biden’s age and vitality.

Why it matters: Many top Democrats are convinced that if the election were today, Biden would lose a rematch with former President Trump. Biden’s address on March 7 is his biggest chance to shift public perceptions.

What we’re hearing: Biden’s SOTU address played well last year — he seemed agile and riffed about the GOP and Social Security. Officials close to him, needing a repeat triumph, will spend hours on everything from the text to his physical preparation to exploit the prime-time moment.

Recent nationwide surveys show a tight race between Biden and Trump, with results of most polls within the margin of error.

Biden has a steep road ahead, facing a vicious opponent whose lies turn ordinary people into fools.

I watch MSNBC and other news channels. The space is monopolized by wall-to-wall, dawn-to-dusk coverage of Trump’s legal challenges, and his desperate maneuvering to stay out of jail. His sycophants deny truth and rally to his defense. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (convicted and executed for being spies during the 1950s) should have been so lucky.

Recently, a New York judge issued a $454 million civil fraud judgment against Trump, after finding he misrepresented the worth of his properties. Trump is also facing an $83.3 million bill after a jury found and a judge affirmed he defamed E. Jean Carroll, the woman he was found liable for sexually assaulting. He’s selling gold-colored sneakers to cover his legal bills.

On recent poll for Bloomberg and Morning Consult found that 53 percent of voters in key swing states would refuse to vote for Trump if he were convicted of a criminal offense. A slightly higher share, 55 percent, say they would reach that conclusion if he were sentenced to prison.

Although Trump’s federal trials have been delayed, he will soon stand trial in New York on felony charges that he falsified business records related to hush money he paid during the 2016 campaign. That trial will begin on March 25 with jury selection and is expected to last approximately six weeks.

But other big issues also matter. About 13 percent of voters in last week’s Democratic primary in Michigan voted for “uncommitted.” The uncommitted effort was designed to send a warning to Biden, that his support for Israel and refusal to call for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip could cost him the state in November. (Michigan has a large Arab-American population.) In the meantime, Biden has ordered air-dropping food and humanitarian supplies into Gaza with a cease-fire, hostage release, and a maritime relief drop in the mix.

And then there’s that U.S. southern border. Both Biden and his challenger were at the border last week. The president invited Trump to join him in supporting the Senate-drafted border bill. And we may see more news about that soon.

The Biden administration is considering taking executive action to deter illegal migration across the southern border, according to two U.S. officials.

The plans have been under consideration for months, the officials said. In December, as Congress prepared to leave town for the holidays with no border solution, illegal crossings of the southwest border hit records at more than 10,000 per day.

So, rally your friends and family for a SOTU watch party on March 7.