OPINION:
As expected, President Biden delivered without question the most divisive and loudest State of the Union address – right down to threatening the Supreme Court and his political enemies — in the history of the republic.
That is probably the natural terminal point of the State of the Union.
As Mr. Biden made clear, there is no more debased American political ritual than that of the State of the Union address, although it wasn’t always that way, and it doesn’t have to be that way.
For instance, for his first State of Union address on Dec. 8, 1801, President Thomas Jefferson sent written copies to both houses of Congress to be read by clerks. Jefferson wanted to eliminate what had become our imitation of the British monarch’s annual speech from the throne.
The healthy practice of sending written copies to Congress continued for more than a century until the most destructive president in our nation’s history —Woodrow Wilson — began the long erosion of the address by resuming the tradition of delivering the annual message in person in April 1913. Wilson also transformed the address from a sober assessment of the federal government and the nation into a propaganda event designed to sell the president’s agenda.
In 1947, President Harry S. Truman sharpened the propaganda value of the address by broadcasting the address on television. President Lyndon B. Johnson amplified the propaganda by moving the speech to prime time.
It is not accidental that the dumbing down of the address was running along a parallel and bipartisan track. The unfortunate tradition of the response to the address started in 1966 when Sen. Everett Dirksen and then Rep. Gerald Ford offered the first response.
Blame President Ronald Reagan for being the first to use human props in the audience. He invited Lenny Skutnik in 1982 to praise him for risking his life in an attempt to save passengers on a plane that had crashed into the Potomac two weeks earlier. What that has to do with the State of the Union is anyone’s guess. Still, the terrible precedent has stuck, and we are now apparently condemned to having human props appear indefinitely.
Before this particular State of the Union, one member of Congress was cynical enough to invite the parents of Laken Riley, the Georgia nursing student recently killed by – I am required to include the word “allegedly” – an illegal immigrant. Mercifully, her parents demurred, sparing the nation the sight of their very personal and terrible loss being exploited for political reasons.
More importantly, the speech itself has become increasingly sillier and more dislocated from the actual reality of the state of our union. Under presidents of all stripes, it has become a contest of who can staple the slogans together or who can propose the most federal programs, irrespective of whether any of them actually address any of the challenges faced by our union.
Thursday night, Mr. Biden’s shouted ramblings did not address or even note our union’s real problems. A short list would include the dissolution of the family and all the pathologies that are attendant to that, the deterioration of communal sensibilities, the erosion in our educational system, a federal government grown too large and too distant from those it rules, the inability of our military to win wars, the complete lack of borders, the concentration of the real privilege of growing up in two-parent households that value moral behavior and achievement.
The “State of the Union” address by Mr. Biden addressed precisely none of these foundational problems of the union he theoretically leads. Instead, Mr. Biden decided to play the role of an angry old man trying to return soup in a deli.
The main problem with popular sovereignty is that the people get the government they deserve, not necessarily the one they need. Voters are dimly aware that something has gone seriously wrong. Anywhere from two-thirds to three-quarters of them think the nation is headed in the wrong direction, a similar percentage would prefer different choices for their leader.
Of course, these are the nominees the voters have themselves selected. They reflect the voters they wish to serve. So does the political ecosystem, where it is now more important to “own” one’s rival, to dominate the news cycle, and to become an influencer than to solve any particular problem.
People must change before kingdoms change. If you want better leaders, be a better voter. Or better yet, get in the game and run for office.
In the meantime, get used to State of the Union addresses that are increasingly – and literally — deranged from the real challenges the nation faces.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times and worked in the Office of Legislative Affairs during the Trump administration.
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