The State of Our Union is Bored
Posted by Zach Wendling on 31 January 2006 | 10 responses
Last year, I briefly described why I refuse to watch the State of the Union Show. I still stand by my rule: Politicians rarely say anything useful in public. I expect tonight’s address to be yet another collection of platitudes and statist proposals. Even if he could muster the character to mention any conservative programs, we know he lacks the ability to carry them out.
Radley Balko excerpts Gene Healy:
The Constitution requires that the president “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.” But it does not mandate the modern ritual of the State of the Union, which consists of a passel of promises and demands on the public fisc, greeted with repeated standing ovations from members of a coordinate branch. That ritual reflects the growing dominance of the presidency in our political system, and our retreat from limited, constitutional government.
In contrast, early presidents often struck a note of modesty and self-restraint: after his third State of the Union, Washington wrote that “motives of delicacy” had deterred him “from introducing any topick which relates to legislative matters, lest it should be suspected that he wished to influence the question before it.”
[...]
Our first two presidents delivered their annual messages to Congress in person before both houses. But Jefferson regarded that practice as “an English habit, tending to familiarize the public with monarchical ideas,” and he put a stop to it, choosing instead to send his annual message in writing. For 112 years, presidents conformed to Jefferson’s example, until the power-hungry Woodrow Wilson delivered his first annual message in person to Congress assembled.
[...]
Washington most often referred to the office he held as the mere “chief magistrate”; modern presidents tend to prefer the title “Commander in Chief,” and at times seem to forget that that title merely makes the president commander of the U.S. armed forces, not commander of the nation as a whole.
Anyone want to guess what the State of our Union is? Let’s recap:
- 2005: Confident and Strong
- 2004: Confident and Strong
- 2003: Strong
- 2002: Never been stronger
- 2000: Strongest it has ever been
- 1999: Strong
- 1998: Strong
- 1997: Strong
- 1996: Strong
- 1995: Stronger than it was two year ago
- 1994: Growing stronger
I’ll go out on a limb and predict that Bush will declare our Union to be, “strong enough for now. Let’s just work on tone and cardio for the rest of my term.”
10 Responses to “The State of Our Union is Bored”
I probably won’t watch anyway. The Pacers unveil Peja Stojakovic.
What about 2001?
The SOTU address is important because the President uses it to propose policy directions. However, those who don’t enjoy the political theatre aspect of it can just as easily read the text later on. Personally, I like watching the pomp and circumstance, but the constant interruptions for standing ovations quickly get old.
This is one of those rare occasions where I agree 100% with what Eric says — it’s good to have a once-a-year agenda-setting session, that people have to pay a bit of attention to. But if they could somehow cut down on the ovations, then, absolutely, that would be a good thing indeed.
The theme this year is something like “Strong, and together, we’ll grow stronger.”
Gerald Ford, State of the Union:
1975: “The state of the Union is not good.”
1976: “The state of the Union is not good enough.”
November 1976: Gerald Ford loses to Jimmy Carter. Maybe that is why every president since seems to pronounce that the state of the union is good, strong, or whatever.
In 2001, Bush laid out a “Budget Message” rather than an official SotU. The addresses in 1993 and 1989 were likewise not officially SotU’s.
And whether the SotU is worth reading depends on how relevent it is to the actual agenda Congress follows. I’d say that this president is in a relatively weak position to be setting the agenda.
Judging from past State of the Union addresses, we’re going to Mars and Iraq was getting uranium from Kenya, or something. Oh yeah, and we need tax cuts because our surpluses are too big. From 2001:
My mistake. The mission to Mars was a plan unveiled by Mr. Bush about a week before the 2004 State of the Union but somehow didn’t merit mention in the address itself.
Well we can still meet the president’s goals of 2001 except that instead of paying down $2 trillion in debt over ten years, we just have to pay down $3 trillion in debt over the next five years.
We can do that through a targeted series of deep tax cuts to the rich and very rich which will stimulate the economy so much that the federal government will run a $600 billion dollar revenue (tax) surplus for each of the next five years.
greg
How about a reality check here is the national debt http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/a hell of lot more than 3 tril.