By Laura Reston Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
Tonight, we will be treated to one of the strangest and most surreal traditions in American politics, as members of Congress, cabinet secretaries and Supreme Court justices cram into the plush leather seats of the House chamber to hear the president deliver the State of the Union address. Half will politely applaud the guests trotted out for the cameras. The other half will glower up at the dais. Some may even drift off having had, perhaps, a glass or two of wine at dinner. |
For more than a century, presidents have given regular speeches to Congress, in a tradition that has only grown creakier and more elaborate as it has aged. In a guest essay this morning, Jacob Bacharach, an author and cultural critic, traces the history of the State of the Union, from the first of these speeches (which Thomas Jefferson had the good sense to despise, convinced the "aristocratical" tradition was better suited to the courts of Europe than a young republic) through the 20th century, when presidents were "culturally ubiquitous, singular synecdoches for America itself," until today. |
"The rise of social media thrust politics into a realm of popular celebrity and turned the campy solemnity of the State of the Union into mere farce," Bacharach writes. "Even the lowliest members of the House of Representatives used to sit at some statesmanlike remove from us, democratic avatars of actual constituencies, yes, but also a kind of abstraction. Now, via social media, we are privy to their passing thoughts, their workout routines and workplace rivalries, their classical American infatuations with crackpot theories. There was once something edifying and even a little mystical about virtually the entire American national government gathering in one place for a grand and unabashedly imperial spectacle. No longer." |
Tonight's speech comes at a critical time for President Biden, with Russian troops advancing on Kyiv, a Supreme Court nomination fight ahead and the pandemic only in abeyance. We asked four of our columnists — David Brooks, Gail Collins, Ross Douthat and Bret Stephens — to tell us what they hoped Biden would include. Speaking as the president, David urged the United States to come to terms with its complicated past. Gail envisioned Biden giving Americans what they want: "constructive boredom." Ross advanced a bold proposal to solve America's sliding birthrates. And Bret called on Congress to compromise on immigration, police reform and the environment. "America never cowered in the face of the Soviet Union," he wrote, as part of his imagined State of the Union. "We won't cower now." |
As a politics editor for Opinion, I'll be watching the State of the Union for clues about Biden's messaging strategy going into the midterms: Will he link voting rights to the assault on Ukraine to make a concerted case for democracy against a global wave of authoritarianism? Can he project strength while acknowledging that times are tough for many Americans — and might get tougher still, if this crisis makes gas even more expensive than it already was? Even so, I find myself wondering if the State of the Union has outlived its usefulness. As Bacharach puts it in his essay, "The founders themselves imagined a new constitutional convention every few generations; perhaps every hundred years is also a good time to come up with new binding national political rites." |
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