Former President Barack Obama talked the talk in poetry. President Joe Biden walks the walk in prose.

What glorious flights of oratory did Obama once take! His sparkle seemed to reach for the best presidential speakers, such as President John F. Kennedy.

But give me Joe any day.

He’s not fancy, fleet of tongue nor foot, but gets the hard job done better than Obama. He navigates the shoals and enjoys the hurly-burly of making deals with Congress.

Biden’s eulogy Tuesday for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor showed simple gravitas.

Meanwhile, the music of Obama’s words vanished in the ether.

I don’t recall him as a phrasemaker, do you? Hope and change, but nothing lasting like “Ask not what your country can do for you…” which lifted hearts across the land.

That was the peak of Kennedy’s famous first inaugural address on a bright snowy morning.

After a 2004 debut as “a skinny kid with a funny name who believes America has a place for him,” Obama’s first inaugural address was a historic, euphoric day.

Yet the speech hasn’t made the popular history books. The weather was biting cold. The Great Recession hung over us. Unfortunately, Obama’s weak fix plunged the economy into a “jobless recovery” for years.

Aren’t results what it’s all about?

Sworn in as a crisis president, Biden delivered on climate, infrastructure, job growth, prescription drugs and ending the pandemic.

Give credit where it’s due to a man who’s aged well into a statesman. Biden is a better president than he was as a loud Delaware senator who let Clarence Thomas onto the Supreme Court. The vice presidency shaped his rough places.

Even at 81, Biden won’t waver from a rough election, an ugly “Us versus Them” match more than ever. Obama did not face such a Promethean task in either 2008 or 2012.

When the president speaks of the “soul” of American democracy, after Trump’s orchestrated mob attack on the Capitol, the words are heartfelt. Historian Jon Meacham helped craft Biden’s message.

Afar, Biden is managing foreign policy on wars in Israel and Ukraine, seasoned with herbs of experience.

By contrast, Obama failed to confront the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, about interference in the 2016 election. He also backed down against Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell on Russian interference and a Supreme Court seat.

You can’t do that when you’re president. Harry Truman or Lyndon Johnson could have told him that. Then again, they were hardened Senate veterans, like Biden, and Obama was only a freshman.

Too often, President Obama ducked campaigning for other Democrats and naively reached out to staunchly opposed Republicans (on health care), costing precious time.

His great gift was as a solo artist with beautiful words.

Biden and former President Bill Clinton knew it in their bones: A president should never lose close votes, as Obama did on immigration and gun violence.

Obama’s one signature legacy, health care reform, was largely delivered by the hard-headed House speaker, Nancy Pelosi. Obama never kept his promise to sign reproductive rights into law.

That fail is a big deal for women and girls right now, personally paid in blood, travel and tears. Meanwhile, Obama silently composes more beautiful words on a legal pad for his next memoir.

What I remember best is that Obama launched his campaign for president from the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, inviting us to put him in Abraham Lincoln’s league.

It was then clear from his memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” that he wrote graceful, poetic passages about his journey growing up biracial in Hawaii. But Lincoln seemed a stretch.

Lincoln’s first inaugural address showed the stuff of early greatness, though he was too conciliatory to the Southern slave states. He invoked the “mystic chords of memory” and appealed: “We are not enemies, but friends.”

“The better angels of our nature” is another line from Lincoln’s eloquent first words to the torn nation in 1861.

Deep in the Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt declared in his first inaugural address, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Unforgettable.

Once in a century, political poetry mixes with great deeds and saving the nation.

Between Obama’s poetry and Biden’s good deeds, let’s go with Joe.

The author may be reached at JamieStiehm.com.

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