The State of the Union address explained
On Jan. 12, President Obama will make his final State of the Union address.
The annual speech, which outlines the agenda for the year, is a time-honored presidential tradition going all the way back to George Washington.
Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution says, “The President shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”
Washington gave the “annual message,” as it used to be known, to Congress in 1790. When Thomas Jefferson became president he changed it from a spoken speech to a written report and his successors followed suit for 112 years, until Woodrow Wilson reversed that trend. (William Henry Harrison and James Garfield were the only presidents that weren’t alive long enough to send a State of the Union message to Congress.)
More changes came in the form of technology. Calvin Coolidge was the first to broadcast the speech on the radio and Harry S. Truman was the first to have it televised. Presenting the speech before Congress became the norm, but there have been some exceptions. For example, in 1981, Jimmy Carter wrote his State of the Union speech and sent it to Congress.
Nowadays, the speaker of the House extends a formal invite to the president a few weeks before to give the address in the House chambers, usually for a date in January or February. The primetime speech is delivered in front of Congress, the Cabinet and the Supreme Court justices. Since that includes a lot of people who are critical to the running of our country, a Cabinet member known as the “designated survivor” and a few members of Congress relocate to undisclosed locations in case of an emergency.
Generally, the president’s speech lasts about an hour, with those in attendance standing and applauding when they agree and remaining seated when they don’t. So, as President Obama makes his final annual address to the nation, when it comes to how the State of the Union came to be, at least you can say, “Now I get it.”
