Kevin McCarthy, the GOP’s State of the Union face

There will be no ripping up the president’s speech or other theatrics from Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday night when millions of Americans get their first televised introduction to his face behind President Joe Biden’s.

But the GOP speaker’s central presence during the State of the Union will shine a national spotlight on his new job: making sure next year’s address to Congress is Biden’s last. As his party begins the long slog to nominating someone who can beat Biden, McCarthy is now effectively the face of congressional Republicans — and his House majority has to position the GOP to take back the White House and the Senate.

McCarthy has made this much clear: He’s not going to visibly play up his role as Biden’s chief antagonist while the president uses his speech to coax Congress to further cap insulin prices and enact policing reforms.

Whether he can keep the rest of his fractious conference similarly in check — think Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) yelling at Biden last year — is another matter. Greene was spotted carrying a large balloon around the Hill Tuesday, a reference to the Biden administration’s handling of a Chinese spy balloon.

“He's an adult,” said Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) “I think you'll get more reaction from the conference than the speaker himself.”

While the California Republican may well act the grown-up in the room for a night, doing so for two more years is another matter. The federal government is divided, his House majority is flimsy and he needed 15 chaotic ballots to win the speakership.

McCarthy is also locked in high-stakes debt ceiling talks with Biden, further necessitating the need for him to appear in control. As he put it on Monday evening: “I won’t tear up a speech. I won’t play games. I'm very respectful. I think it's an important night.”

And while McCarthy plans to stay stoic during Biden’s remarks, the speaker’s been saying a lot — both to the president and about him. The two leaders haven’t had much of a relationship in the past, as of last September they’d talked on the phone only once. Now they have to build a rapport if they have any hope of resolving the looming debt ceiling crisis.

Since their first one-on-one, in-person meeting, the talks have taken on a positive tone. McCarthy called it a productive sit-down, and Biden’s team called it a “frank and straightforward dialogue.”

Republicans are watching with great interest.

“The question is: What can the House pass? And we don’t know the answer,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). “He’s got a very slim majority, and if I were him, what I’d be thinking about is: ‘How do I keep my sea legs long enough until we can build a bigger majority in 2024?’ That’s going to be hard.”

So far McCarthy’s critics have offered mostly gentle assessments: Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), a leading challenger in the speaker race, said he’s still looking for McCarthy to “lead” on calling for a balanced budget as part of the debt limit debate but that negotiations are currently operating in “good faith." Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a more vocal critic, even gave McCarthy “an A” for his stewardship of the conference thus far.

It’s unlikely that Republicans will extend the same wait-and-see approach to Biden, however. Many have few incentives to play nice with a president who’s on the cusp of a reelection effort that emboldens them to tear him down politically.

House Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry (R-Pa.) said his Trump-aligned group planned to be “respectful” and listen to Biden on Tuesday night.

But, he cautioned: “If the president plays fast and loose with the facts … obviously, we're gonna have an opinion.”

Few sitting House Republicans have a relationship with the former Delaware senator, with 40 percent of the House GOP getting elected during the last two midterm cycles. Biden served in the Senate through 2008 and then as vice president, a role that aligned him far more with the upper chamber than the raucous House.

So, in many ways, it will be up to McCarthy to determine what sort of relationship his conference has with Biden.

“Republicans, as you know, are not a homogenous bunch,” explained Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), a former House member who served in party leadership with McCarthy. “Part of the role of anyone leading either party is to be able to determine not only where the party is as a whole, but the common ground everyone has right now. And how do we move together? He’s doing a good job with that.”

The State of the Union has proved a powerful stage for opposition-party members to make headlines. After then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) ripped up a Donald Trump speech, Boebert and Greene infamously stood, interrupted and jeered Biden during his 2022 address to Congress — a statement of distaste for the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and support for Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall. The Freedom Caucus duo later turned their anti-Biden moment into a fundraising push.

McCarthy did his part to prevent any possible attention-grabbing ploys on Tuesday, using the GOP’s closed-door conference meeting that morning to deliver lawmakers an annual reminder of the importance of decorum. His message, according to lawmakers, was that cameras are everywhere during the speech, so act accordingly. (“Hopefully nobody will get caught doing something inappropriate,” said senior Oklahoma GOP Rep. Tom Cole.)

Pelosi's on-camera responses to the former president’s addresses to Congress — which included a seemingly derisive clap during his 2019 State of the Union — offered viral moments that Republican after Republican insisted their party leader would not repeat on Tuesday.

“In this case, he’s the face of us — and obviously, the president is the face of the loyal opposition. Together, we’re going to try to figure out where in the middle ground we can find some improvements,” said Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio), who leads the Republican Governance Group.

As for McCarthy stepping into the limelight himself on Tuesday, Joyce quipped: “Can’t we have a better-looking face?”

Meredith Lee Hill, Olivia Beavers and Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.