By Gene Healy
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/mr-president-tweet-state-union-forget-about-useless-pomp-speechhe week-long standoff over the State of the Union address began Jan. 16, when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called on President Trump to delay the SOTU or deliver it in writing. For a brief period, you had to wonder whether Trump would force the issue, gate-crashing the Capitol, with the Secret Service outgunning the House Sergeant-at-Arms.
Luckily, the dispute ended peaceably, after a rare climbdown by Trump. “I will do the Address when the Shutdown is over,†the President tweeted Wednesday evening.
Earlier that day, the Trump had griped: “It would be so very sad for our country, if the State of the Union were not delivered on time, on schedule, and very importantly, on location!†Actually it’s no great loss . . .
. . . True, the “security concerns†Pelosi cited were bogus. Our third President, Thomas Jefferson, offered far better reasons for switching to the written SOTU. In his 1801 letter to the Senate proposing the move, Jefferson described it as a time-saving measure for “the convenience of the legislature.†But his principal motivation was a small-‘r’ republican one: Jefferson thought the in-person address favored by Washington and Adams “too kingly for the new republic,†a monarchical “Speech from the Throne."
From Jefferson’s first SOTU to William Howard Taft’s last, the Jeffersonian tradition reigned. It took a series of imperial Presidents, starting with the norm-busting Woodrow Wilson, to usher in the modern State of the Union . . . . . . You’d never confuse President Trump or Speaker Pelosi with Thomas Jefferson, but their unpleasant little spat has given us an opportunity to reboot the Jeffersonian tradition. Trump could even put his own “modern-day presidential†spin on the written message, delivering it via Twitter: “My fellow Americans (Thread): 1/126…â€
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Now, I wouldn't recommend the SOTU as a tweetstorm if only because it might give President Tweety just enough excuses to go off message and you-know-where, but I'm
all in on doing away with the damn spectacle of the Big Speech and returning to the old tradition of writing it, sending it written to Congress, and being done with it, and if anyone really wants to read what's essentially been a Me-I'm-The-One screed since long before President Tweety came to the White House, they'll stick it into the
Congressional Record.---EA.
