In the wake of President Obama's Jan. 25 State of the Union address - a speech that was little different from any other State of the Union Address during the last few decades - it is worth reflecting on what this constitutional ritual has become. The State of the Union, originally a mechanism for bringing the president to account before Congress, has become a monarchical affair. It is characterized by presidential efforts to dominate Congress's agenda. Worse still, the form of a speech invites demagoguery and platitudes, rather than the sophistication and rigor that America deserves in its national self-appraisal. History provides a solution: reviving the tradition of a presidential letter to the Congress.
While Washington and Adams both delivered the State of the Union in person, Thomas Jefferson declined to do so, and hence began the tradition of presidential letters. When Woodrow Wilson - the great friend of presidential power - resurrected the speech, he did so in the context of an already-enhanced degree of executive dominance. In doing so, Wilson enhanced that dominance further. His legacy has been a ritual which symbolically invests national purpose and direction - and even identity - in the public official properly responsible only for the execution rather than for the construction of the laws.
The president is now expected to set the agenda for Congress - the exact reverse of the constitutional purpose of the State of the Union and the idea of separation of power between the branches of government. Last year's State of the Union went even further in constitutional trespass when Obama publicly scolded the Supreme Court in attendance - a body enjoined from response, at that time or any time, by protocol. Yet this demonstrates the mutation of the event: the president no longer addresses Congress; he addresses the public, with all the crudity and simplicity invited by that audience. The people's representatives - and last year the justices of the nation's highest court - are the King's props, and the Capitol his backcloth.
As with any attempt to curry favor with the mass population, triteness predominates in the modern political ceremony. Rather than attempt to construct an analysis of the nation's challenges, allowing phrase and style to fall in alignment with that purpose, the modern president constantly searches for the golden slogan to be repeated over and again by the media machine. Pat patriotic tropes take the place of arguments that might serve the nation; treacly anecdotes of economic pain crowd out analysis of the real economy.
A written letter would expose the emotional falsity of the folksy anecdotes and the parade of "ordinary American" rhetoric that now saturates the State of the Union address like syrup. Commentators who decry, rightly, the sound bite culture of modern politics should consider how a letter would be received. Rather than the endless replaying of cut-and-diced phrases on the media stereopticon, the aftermath of a written State of the Union would be by nature more subdued and considered. Emotional tales intended to short-circuit skeptical criticism lose their effect when deprived of "presidential empathy." Presidents would have to demonstrate not that they "care," but that they comprehend the challenges of the day. At the most basic level, the event would no longer be the single speech, but the intellectual response of Congress and the nation.
America is a nation born in the Declaration of Independence and made substantial by the Constitution; writing, not charismatic rhetoric, is at the heart of the American character. Yet today every national event is established in speech. Would it not be better for each generation, each presidency, to take as its purpose the extension and elaboration of the American canon? Such a goal is not reconcilable with the demagogic demands of mass appeal - and it invites such low standards in Congress itself. One has a hard time imagining the Congress of Clay, Webster and Calhoun responding to any modern State of the Union with anything less than contempt.
Roraig Finney's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at r.finney@cavalierdaily.com.
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