Contributing Columnist Talmage Boston(Michael Hogue)
Knowing how popular President Donald Trump now is to the GOP, and how despised he is by today’s Democrats, with an almost evenly divided Congress, his speech this evening should provide a big chunk of dramatic optics.
Yes, it’s been only six weeks since Trump was sworn in and gave his inaugural address and, in many respects, his speech that day provided the content requirement set forth in the Constitution’s directive that the president shall periodically deliver a State of the Union address. In hopes of reiterating what he said at his inauguration, and probably expanding his prior remarks in light of what he’s done since Jan. 20, Trump has chosen to call tonight’s speech an “Address Before a Joint Session of Congress” rather than a State of the Union address — yet a rose by any other name is still a rose.
Republicans will surely cheer his every sentence like he’s the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan, and Dems will respond with a mixture of stone-faced silence and politically correct jeers. The “address” should certainly give pundits on both sides of the spectrum mass quantities of content from which to draw conclusions pro and con.
In terms of what to expect from the speech itself, no one should expect tonight’s remarks to be short since Trump is no George Washington and has a tendency to ramble off script. Our first president delivered the first State of the Union Address on Jan. 8, 1790, and he still holds the record for his speech being the shortest of its kind at 1,089 words. Big George always believed that in public speaking, “less is more,” and his first address is still regarded as one of the best — with its concise call for unity, clarity about what legislation he believed Congress needed to pass, and call for a “free, efficient, and equal government.”
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No one should expect Trump’s words tonight to be eloquent, since he’s no Abraham Lincoln. Given that all presidential commentary from 1801-1913 was written, with his document delivered to both chambers of Congress on Dec. 1, 1862, Lincoln put his pen to paper for the constitutionally required occasion, more than two months after issuing his first Emancipation Proclamation on Sept. 22, 1862, and shortly before issuing his second and final proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863.
These proclamations provided the Union’s efforts in the Civil War with a new stated purpose of giving freedom to all people enslaved in the Confederate States, and Lincoln’s written (and well-publicized) words elevated that historic occasion: “In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free. … We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth.”
Also, this evening, no one should expect Trump to articulate a vision for what our federal government needs to provide for its citizens that will inspire the creation of a nationally renowned artistic composition, since he’s no Franklin D. Roosevelt. On Jan. 6, 1941, while Nazi Germany’s army occupied most of Western Europe, and with Congress on the verge of considering proposed Lend-Lease legislation that would become law two months later, FDR knew that most Americans were locked into an isolationist mindset.
To move the public sentiment needle toward a more international collaborative mindset, FDR said in his address that short of sending our soldiers into battle in World War II (which would not occur until eleven months later after Pearl Harbor in December 1941), at that “unprecedented moment,” he believed our nation had a responsibility to people “everywhere in the world,” because “the democratic way of life is at this moment being directly assailed in every part of the world.”
Thus, “in the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential freedoms: … freedom of speech and expression, freedom of every person to worship God in his own way, freedom from want … which means to secure to every nation a healthy peaceful life for its inhabitants,” and “freedom from fear … which means no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world.”
After Norman Rockwell, America’s most popular illustrator of the era, heard and reflected on Roosevelt’s words, he drew the “Four Freedoms,” which appeared on the covers of the Feb. 20, Feb. 27, March 6, and March 13, 1943, issues of The Saturday Evening Post, and they became some of the most admired images of his career.
They epitomized the reason for our need to do what it took to bring down Adolf Hitler, and after the war, FDR’s expression of the Four Freedoms became inscribed in the Charter of the United Nations in 1945.
Having now reviewed what not to expect in tonight’s speech in light of past SOTU addresses, what can they tell us about what we should expect?
Since Trump delights in bashing everything associated with his predecessor’s record, he may say something similar to what Gerald Ford said in his 1975 post-Watergate State of the Union address: “The State of the Union is not good” — and then proceed to blame Joe Biden for everything that’s now wrong with our federal government, and vow to restore American exceptionalism in the next four years.
We might also see Trump repeat what Bill Clinton said in his 1996 State of the Union Address, hoping to inspire a political turnaround later that election year in the aftermath of the 1994 midterms, which had produced the “Republican Revolution” takeover of Congress. Clinton’s highly animated words that night: “The era of big government is over!” Our current president would surely enjoy mocking a Democratic predecessor by pointing out how Clinton’s 1996 views were absolutely correct and now align with one of Trump’s top priorities — shrinking the size of the federal government.
We might also expect Trump to use words similar to those chosen by George W. Bush in his January 2002 State of the Union Address, when, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, he described the three nations he held responsible for harboring, financing and aiding terrorists — North Korea, Iran, and Iraq — as the “axis of evil.” Tonight, since Trump sees everything that doesn’t embrace his agenda as “evil,” don’t be surprised if he injects the “E” word into his digs aimed at adversaries.
All who tune in to this evening’s speech should be ready for a high-voltage experience. Sparks may fly with the address being anything but boring and not likely to put anyone to sleep, unlike U. S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who dozed off during Barack Obama’s 2015 speech, for all the world to see on television.
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