In Trump’s first speech to Congress, will decorum hold?
White House says address will be forward-looking
WASHINGTON — A presidential speech to Congress is one of those all-American moments that ooze ritual and decorum.
The House sergeant-atarms will stand at the rear of the House of Representatives on Tuesday night and announce the arrival of Donald Trump before a joint session of Congress by intoning: “Mister Speaker, the President of the United States,” just like always.
Trump will stride down the center aisle to lusty cheers and hearty handshakes from his Republican supporters. First lady Melania Trump, accompanied by special guests, will smile from the gallery above.
From there, though, the president can take the night in any number of directions. So can the Democrats who oppose him.
The White House is promising that Trump’s first address to Congress will be a forward-looking one about the “renewal of the American spirit.”
The speech offers Trump an opportunity to stand before millions of viewers around the United States and the world, and try to reframe his presidency after a chaotic opening in which he’s rattled world leaders, railed against leaked information, engaged in open warfare with the press and seen his signature effort to halt some immigration thwarted by the courts. He probably will stress early achievements, such as his nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court and a series of executive orders to rein in government.
But the staid setting of the House chamber doesn’t play to Trump’s strengths. He captured the White House with his say-anything style at raucous campaign rallies and his red “Make America Great Again” ball cap.
Trump has shown he can stick to a script, but not necessarily the one people expected.
His inaugural address, typically a moment for optimism and gauzy possibilities, was a darkly sketched recitation of “American carnage.”
His speech at the Republican convention last summer offered a similarly apocalyptic pledge to save the U.S. from Hillary Clinton’s record of “death, destruction, terrorism and weakness.”
“We’ve been fooled previously,” says Aaron Kall, director of debate at the University of Michigan. “We keep waiting for the pivot, but it hasn’t yet materialized.”
There also are big questions about how Democrats will choose to show their opposition to the president, especially if they are emboldened by the vocal Trump opponents who have turned out in force at legislators’ town-hall meetings in their home districts over the past few weeks.
Already, Democrats have made a point of inviting immigrants and foreigners to attend Trump’s speech as a choreographed counterpoint to his exclusionary immigration policies.
There is no shortage of bad blood between the Democrats and Trump. He has mocked their Senate leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, as the “head clown,” as a “lightweight” and for crying “fake tears” on behalf of those blocked from entering the U.S.
Likewise, the president still has work to do within his own party.
The president so far appears on friendly terms with congressional Republicans.
But GOP legislators are getting impatient for details of the president’s positions on top issues, such as a tax overhaul, repealing President Barack Obama’s health care law and trade policy.
They’re also wary of some of Trump’s more unrestrained ways of expressing himself.