Who cares about the State of the Union? It turns out that maybe I do
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Version 0 of 1. When it comes to big political speeches like Tuesday night’s State of the Union, we can never really admit to ourselves how unimportant they tend to be to most Americans. Not to knock presidential speechwriters but, as everyone knows, we are living in an era where the power of the internet and instant sharing has outstripped the power of the speechmaking tradition. You can learn far, far more about your president (and the team around him) by looking at Twitter while in line for lunch every day than by listening intently to a once-a-year oration. You’re also far more likely to remember, and to internalize, the news bites you come across on your own or through friends – Obama on Between Two Ferns, for instance – than something like any given State of the Union, which always looks the same and usually the sounds the same. Ask yourself if you remember anything at all from Obama’s previous addresses – I don’t, even though it was once my job to help sell them. So why does he bother to have the speech at all? I’m generally critical of the old mainstays of presidential newsmaking; I think we should save the White House briefings and primetime direct-to-camera addresses for real emergencies (which is pretty much the only time that people outside Washington tune in anyway). So when the State of Union comes around, with its posturing and perfunctory standing ovations and big new plans that will never become law, I’m tempted to suggest that administrations should forgo this tradition, too – or just go back to the days when presidents met their constitutional requirement by sending Congress a written assessment. But watching on Tuesday night – ready to wish it out of existence – it struck me that there is one way in which the speech is still important: it’s definitive. Lawmakers are fond of the old cliché that goes, “you’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.” But part of what’s so frustrating about politics these last few years is that that’s no longer true: suddenly we are entitled to our own facts, and there’s no straight answer to anything. We have a blizzard of negative events – Ferguson, Newtown, Syria, Paris – and a growing pile of positive signs - more jobs, a growing stock market, marriage-discrimination laws collapsing – but it seems beyond our power to make the case for any particular course of national action. Such a relief, then, to see the President, all smiles, stride to the podium to tell us exactly how things are and how they could be – even if it’s oversimplified. None of us will likely remember this year’s speech any better than we remember last year’s, but (for those of us not already inclined to simply despise him and every word out of his mouth) it was nice just to hear to the leader of our country speak forcefully and without caveat about why America is doing great. He praised the administration’s accomplishments by explaining “We believed”, and then set out in clear terms the ways in which those beliefs have been vindicated: 11m new jobs, the wars winding down, kids doing better in school, progress on the road to energy independence. He promised to “focus less on a checklist of proposals” but gave us one anyway, and that sounded pretty rosy, too. And, he did it without resorting much to the things that his opponents in Congress love to excoriate him for – blaming Bush, demonizing Wall Street, and threatening executive action. I don’t imagine that even the most staunch Democrat who watched really accepted as truth everything that the president said; we just aren’t programmed that way anymore. Nor do I think that actual middle class people are going to be discussing “Middle Class Economics” (the stated theme of the speech) around the water cooler on Wednesday. But for the majority of people who did watch, there was something reassuring in the President of the United states giving us permission to stop feeling so terrible about where the country and all of us are headed. “The shadow of crisis has passed,” he said – and it feels good to think so. |