Best idea in years
And it comes from Nancy Pelosi
THE FORMER and current speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives has ticked up the pressure a bit on the president during this government shutdown. She’s hitting him where it hurts.
Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to the White House this week saying that since the government was shut down, and agencies like Homeland Security and the Secret Service were at least partially affected by it, the president should skip the State of the Union address until after the government has re-opened. Or the president can send the address to Congress in writing. Ouch.
This president, like all presidents, likes the cameras. Donald Trump was a TV star before he got into politics. Cutting him off from a hour-long freebie on the networks might seem like a hit below the belt. Because it is. Nancy Pelosi knows what she’s doing.
But she might have accidentally stumbled upon the best idea in years. At least her best idea in years.
The State of the Union should be written, sent to Congress, released to the public, and otherwise ignored.
Is there a more boring hour on television? We’d rather read a telephone book. Isn’t there a rerun of Momma’s Boys on another channel?
The SOTU works like this: For 15 minutes the president walks through Congress, shaking hands of those who’ll allow it. He gets to the podium, thanks the speaker, the Senate leader, the vice president, his family, the Supreme Court justices, his Cabinet and any special guests he’s invited. That takes up another 15 minutes.
He’ll then go through what he thinks are his accomplishments, and depending on the topic, Congress will cheer— or half of Congress will cheer while the other half sits on its hands. The members of Congress will decide whether to applaud any particular sentence of the speech depending on what the people sitting behind the president do. This goes on for another hour. Then the next two days are devoted to the press trying to figure out exactly what the president meant to say.
Can you remember, Gentle Reader, a time when a State of the Union address wasn’t a snooze fest? What are the most memorable ones? The ones that immediately come to mind have nothing to do with what the president said, but what the audience said, from a member of Congress shouting, “You lie!” to a Supreme Court justice shaking his head in disagreement.
Nothing in the Constitution requires this wasted hour to hour and a half.
Article II, Section III of the Constitution says the president “shall 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 . . . . ” Nothing about a speech there. Woodrow Wilson, among his other sins, was the first president to start the tradition of giving an annual speech. For most of the nation’s history, this wasn’t even a thing.
But it has turned into free advertisement for not only the president, but the opposition party, too. For much is made of those who don’t applaud at certain points.
Is there not enough of Washington, D.C., on television already? Any poor soul who’s not getting enough can simply turn over to Fox News or CNN 24 hours a day. If the electricity is on, Washington politics is on.
Here’s a good way for a candidate to grab votes and maybe even a few newspaper endorsements in the next presidential primary: Promise to skip the State of the Union address and go back to issuing a statement to Congress from time to time, as the founders suggested. We’d call that a conservative design.
And as an Extra Added Bonus, the television-viewing public could get better programming, more intelligent writing, sharper scripts and superior acting on another program.
Like on The Bachelor.