Most Gentle Readers are aware that the American President has the constitutional obligation to provide the Congress information on the State of the Union, and to recommend policy measures in connection with that information. Our First President determined that such reports should be given in an oral address to the joint houses, once a year, generally at the beginning of the congressional session. Mr. Jefferson thought that it was pompous aristrocratic monarchism to address the congress face to face, and began to submit written reports. Woodrow Wilson, taking to heart the idea of the bully pulpit, returned to the idea of a speech, but Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover returned to the page. Franklin Roosevelt, that political genius, took the State of the Union message into its modern broadcast form, which has now seen seventy years of speeches, more and more directed to the audience listening (and, eventually, watching) at home, rather than the poor saps in our Legislature.
This is prelude. I just want to wrap myself in a little historical context. OK? It’s hard, sometimes, to break free of my own expectations. One of those expectations is that the President (whoever and whenever he is) will give such an annual speech, and that he will say that the state of the Union is strong.
“Tonight the state of our Union is strong, and together we will make it stronger.” �2006Hmm. Is it possible that a little more than twenty years ago, it was possible to make a successful political speech in which the state of our country is described in less than glowing terms?
“Tonight, with a healthy, growing economy, with more Americans going back to work, with our Nation an active force for good in the world - the state of our union is confident and strong.” �2005
“In their efforts, their enterprise, and their character, the American people are showing that the state of our Union is confident and strong.” �2004
“In all these days of promise and days of reckoning, we can be confident. In a whirlwind of change and hope and peril, our faith is sure, our resolve is firm, and our union is strong.” �2003
“As we gather tonight, our nation is at war, our economy is in recession, and the civilized world faces unprecedented dangers. Yet the state of our Union has never been stronger.” �2002
“My fellow Americans, the state of our Union is the strongest it has ever been.” �2000
“My fellow Americans, I stand before you tonight to report that the state of our Union is strong.” �1999
“Ladies and gentlemen, the state of our Union is strong.” �1998
“My fellow Americans, the state of our Union is strong.” �1997
“My duty tonight is to report on the state of the Union, not the state of our Government but of our American community, and to set forth our responsibilities, in the words of our Founders, to form a more perfect Union. The state of the Union is strong.” �1996
“In this effort I am frank to say that I have made my mistakes, and I have learned again the importance of humility in all human endeavor. But I am also proud to say tonight that our country is stronger than it was 2 years ago.” �1995
“Tonight, my fellow Americans, we are summoned to answer a question as old as the Republic itself: What is the state of our Union? It is growing stronger, but it must be stronger still. With your help, and God's help, it will be.” �1994
“Let me say that so long as we remember the American idea, so long as we live up to the American ideal, the state of the Union will remain sound and strong.” �1990
“Tonight, then, we're strong, prosperous, at peace, and we are free. This is the state of our Union.” �1988
“I am pleased to report the state of our Union is stronger than a year ago and growing stronger each day.” �1986
“I come before you to report on the state of our Union, and I'm pleased to report that after 4 years of united effort, the American people have brought forth a nation renewed, stronger, freer, and more secure than before.” �1985
“Once again, in keeping with time-honored tradition, I have come to report to you on the state of the Union, and I'm pleased to report that America is much improved, and there's good reason to believe that improvement will continue through the days to come.” �1984
“As we gather here tonight, the state of our Union is strong, but our economy is troubled.”-1983
I was headed, in all this, back to 1941 (who here guessed? Come on, hands?) when Franklin Roosevelt said “... as your President, performing my constitutional duty to "give to the Congress information of the state of the union," I find it unhappily necessary to report that the future and the safety of our country and of our democracy are overwhelmingly involved in events far beyond our borders.” I was shocked by that admission, and by the admission that it was an admission—when Our Only President is forced to unhappy necessity, he certainly denies that it is a forced necessity, or that he is unhappy about it, all the same as Our Previous President and The One Before That. Well, different times, different strategies, and then all this was really a digression to an attempt at that 1941 SotU, before the list demanded its own place in the Tohu Bohu. The quotes, by the way, are courtesy of The American Presidency Project, out of UC Santa Barbara.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
Your sample size seems a little biased to me, in that 1983 – 2001 was a pretty amazing period of American history, in which the nation pretty much was doing well, and looked likely to continue to do well, every single year.
King George’s comments in recent years are just lies; his “never been stronger” line in 2002 is particularly laughable.
Well, and there were two sizable recessions in that period, and poverty went up a lot, and for a good chunk of that time wages were stagnant, but on the whole, yes, we are talking about a couple of decades of (relative) peace and prosperity.
My point, though, was not that one President or another was lying, but that for nearly twenty years, there has been a tradition of saying something very close to “the state of our Union is strong.” And, in fact, since I was thirteen at the time of SotU 1983, and didn’t start watching the speech every year until some years later, and didn’t become a sophisticated consumer of political rhetoric until around 1988, my impression is that such a tradition goes back forever. When I read SotU 1941, I compare it to the SotUs of my lifetime, more accurately of my adult life, and it is very different indeed.
Thanks,
-V.