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He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient

What is the US President’s State of the Union address supposed to accomplish?

from an interview at WaPo on January 24th….

Nixon speechwriter Lee Huebner: I think it’s a schizophrenic speech. On the one hand, it’s an administrative tool, it’s a way of managing the government . . . of defining priorities, of getting input from every bureau and agency. . . . It all comes together and then gets mashed into an overlong, often very dull speech. .

Certainly the task of distilling input from nearly every department and agency in the US government to blend flawlessly with the Commander-in-Chief’s expression of an agenda for the country based on current conditions is a formidable challenge to say the least.

Well then, how’d it go for President Obama’s first? No doubt the Democrats loved it.

Looking only at interviews conducted on the two nights following the speech, it is clear that the President enjoyed a bounce in the polls and that the bounce came from members of his own party. On the morning of the speech, 50% of Democrats Strongly Approved of the President’s performance. On the two nights following the speech, that number jumped to 65%. There was essentially no change among Republican and unaffiliated voters.

It rarely makes sense to challenge the wisdom of the Founders. But the following commentary if nothing else offers some welcome humor to an otherwise solemn topic. It may be the result of being worn out in times past preparing for this major political event.

Reagan speechwriter Peter Robinson: I consider the State of the Union one of the central mysteries of modern American life. The president doesn’t want to give it, Congress doesn’t want to listen to it, and the networks don’t want to cover it, and every year the damn thing happens all the same. Nobody would have invented it — the founders sort of backed their way into it, and we’re stuck with it . . . a kind of a permanent ritual.

Rituals are good. Tradition is good. It is unfortunate that we tweak and modify processes that are just fine in their original form.

I wrote Lenny Skutnik into the finale. I wrote the passage, and that created the hero-in-the-gallery ploy, which unfortunately has been milked to death since and overdone. I almost regret it.

As in an earlier post here on the topic of President Obama’s SOTU speech the conclusion drawn is that nothing changed. The same rhetoric, same message, same agenda is what this President proposes. Although the permanent campaigner may have changed that strategy somewhat since the speech. Confronting the GOP at an issue or policy conference may be stage two. Given stage one, the SOTU, did not get it done.

Stanford Matthews
MoreWhat.com

(it is hoped WaPo does not take offense at my ‘liberal’ use of their content in this post.)

This entry was posted on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 7:42 am and is filed under Public Affairs, wordpress, Politics, America. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.