Out Of State
Nancy Pelosi has said during the shutdown President Trump should not make his State Of The Union address for security reasons. While it's a transparent ploy, it's nevertheless a good idea.
Already this clause is outdated. It was written in a time before television, telephones, telegraphs, or any kind of instantaneous information. It made sense to require the President to keep the Congress abreast of the latest at least annually. It wasn't easy for everyone to get together and share things.
It's still required by law. But there's no requirement for a speech. The President can just send a report on paper (or pixels, I suppose). The speech has become completely politicized. The President isn't informing Congress, he's playing to the cameras. Meanwhile, the Dems and Repubs applaud or stay silent to make it clear where they stand.
Let's end the modern tradition of a big speech. It's an annoying event best missed. It would be wonderful it we wouldn't have to miss it because it didn't happen.
posted by LAGuy @ 9:49 AM
4 Comments:
Already this clause is outdated? Not sure the word already applies here. What is it, 230 years old? You sound like Vox.
Nor is it outdated. It's rather like the regular statement and account clause: It serves a function to have each of the branches communicate this or that, just as we hold courts to account (ha, ha) by having them publish opinions.
But for the love of God, you're right: Put it in a fucking envelope and have prisoners, excuse me, members smuggle it into the chamber in their recti, after which they can reassemble it in the proper order.
Hmm. That's a way more accurate description of the legislative process than "I'm just a bill."
It's outdated because there is continuous, instantaneous communication about everything. Every part of the government regularly published countless pages and pixels describing what they're doing, and everything the President says (even before there were tweets) and does officially is known.
The original idea was, with travel and communication difficult, we needed to keep in touch at least once a year. Now it would be better if they required politicians to stop communicating at least once a year.
Now it would be better if they required politicians to stop communicating at least once a year.
There are few things I agree with as much as I agree with this!
When the Constitution was written, a newly elected President took office 4 months after his election, and Congressmen took office 13 months after theirs. Now they both take office 2 months after. Communication technology made the old delay absurd.
Washington and Adams gave live speeches, but this tradition was then abandoned for more than a century. Woodrow Wilson revived it, followed by Harding. Coolidge and Hoover returned to written speeches, but then FDR returned to live speeches, which have been the norm ever since.
(With a couple exceptions. Truman in 1946 and Nixon in 1973 delivered written speeches instead of live.)
Even more recently, several major changes to the tradition have occurred:
(1) Before the 1950s, an outgoing (lame duck) president never delivered a State of the Union address. But in January 1953, Harry Truman delivered a State of the Union address in his final month in office. This tradition was continued by Eisenhower, Johnson, Ford, and Carter. (However, three of these five -- Truman, Ike, and Carter -- delivered their final SOTU in written form, even though their other SOTUs were live. Johnson and Ford delivered theirs live.)
(2) Reagan abandoned this final SOTU, and no president since him has delivered one.
(3) From 1789 to 1977, a newly elected president gave an SOTU each year he was in office, including his first year. Then in January 1981, Reagan gave a speech to Congress, but instead of calling it "the State of the Union," he called it "Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Program for Economic Recovery." Every president since him has followed suit: their very first speech is not called a "State of the Union" but is given some other vague title.
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