The impulses on display in these presidents’ treatment of the annual address—Wilson’s and FDR’s imperiousness and impatience with the constitutional restraints on their power; Clinton’s unctuousness and his and Obama’s lofty pedantry—are all impulses shared by the current, Republican president.
One of the few fringe benefits of this presidency has been the withering of certain institutions built on professional Washington’s enormous self-regard. Absent a “cool” president, or at least one who’ll play along, we’ve seen the end of the celebrity-studded Kennedy Center galas and the auto-destruction of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi canceled her initial invitation to deliver the State of the Union in light of the government shutdown, I nurtured hope that the president would respond by deflating its importance, as well.
Absent that, I thought he might at least replace the event with a kind of “Taco Bell Presents SOTU Fest 2019: Live From the Rose Garden and With a Special Performance by Nickelback.” That would have achieved a similar purpose.
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