Quickies: The State Of The Union Address

     He 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; he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper; he shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers; he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and shall commission all the officers of the United States. [Constitution of the United States, Article II, Section 3]

     The president’s duties, as indicated by the citation above, do include informing Congress about “the state of the union.” However, the relevant clause does not specify how that duty is to be performed: neither how often, nor where, nor by what means. Moreover, the “tradition” of a public State Of The Union Address, delivered in person and orally to a joint session of Congress, is far younger than most people believe: proto-fascist Woodrow Wilson began the “tradition” in 1913.

     Thus, Nancy Pelosi cannot “cancel” this presidential duty, as has been suggested by some commentators. President Trump can simply select an alternate means of conveying the information to Congress that he believes Congress should receive.

     The presidential duty of informing Congress about the state of the union derives from several characteristics of the early United States:

• News relevant to the entire nation took several weeks to circulate, rather than being instantaneous;
• Sessions of Congress were far shorter then than now, typically only a few weeks per year;
• A Representative or Senator had to make a difficult overland journey to attend a session;
• The president was the only federal official whose official duties were continuous.

     Today a formal State Of The Union Address is a relic, something that could easily be disposed of with no adverse consequences. Presidents use it mainly for televised publicity, self-congratulation, and to whip up support for their personal legislative agendas. There would be a lot less Sturm und Drang about it were presidents to return to the Nineteenth Century practice of submitting a written summary to Congress and letting it go at that.

     Mr. President: How about doing it via an email? You have an email-address list of all those clowns on Capitol Hill, don’t you? Just a thought, mind you.