THE 28th PRESIDENT GAVE THE FIRST “STATE-OF-THE-UNION” SPEECH

…President Woodrow Wilson gave the first SOTU speech in 1913

 

The SOTU speech demonstrates a president’s real political power.

 

Anyone that knows me well, knows that I’m a nut for political history and the biographies of former presidents.

 

When I realized that soon the current president would be giving his first “State-of-the-Union” speech, I decided to look into when was the first STOU speech was given directly to the US Congress.

 

As it turns out, it wasn’t until 1913 that Woodrow Wilson let the US Congress know that he intended to give the STOU address in person to a joint session of the US Congress.

 

For nearly ½ of the history of the United States, the idea of a president personally delivering a speech on the floor of the congress was considered to be unthinkable.

President Wilson had tested out this idea right after his 1913 inauguration, when he traveled to Capitol Hill to give a speech on import tariffs.  “WASHINGTON IS AMAZED”, The Washington Post announced in a headline, over a story that noted no president since John Adams had done such a thing.

 

“Disbelief was expressed in congressional circles when the report that the President would read his message in person to the Congress was first circulated,” The Post reported, but falsely assured its readers that such spectacles were “not to become a habit.”

However, President Wilson had other ideas. Eight months later on December, 2, 1913, he returned to Capitol Hill “in pursuance of my constitutional duty to ‘give to the Congress information of the state of the Union.’”

 

The president noted that in the US Constitution it states that “the president 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.”

 

Thomas Jefferson had discontinued any presentations in person, and some said that it was in part due to the muddy thoroughfare of Pennsylvania Avenue to the new Capitol.  But those close to Jefferson said it was more probably due to the fact that Jefferson was terrified of public speaking.

Wilson’s decision to deliver the message as a speech was more than just an attention-grabbing move. It also reflected his view, which is probably Donald Trump’s view, of how a president should demonstrate his real political power.

 

“He [Wilson] deliberately wanted to break the precedent,” said John Milton Cooper Jr., a University of Wisconsin history professor emeritus and author of a 2009 Wilson biography.  “Wilson believed that the framers of the Constitution had made a mistake in delineating such a strong separation of powers among the three branches of government,” Cooper explained.

 

Among most Progressives of that era, Wilson believed that a “melding of the roles of the houses of government” would to be more democratic, because it would be more responsive to public opinion.

 

This 28th president had upended the order that had existed throughout most of the 19th century.  That being that most policymaking back then always began with the Congress. Wilson, as with presidents since then, used his State of the Union address to set in motion agendas of his own.

 

I suspect that’s exactly what the narssist Donald Trump will do with his first SOTU speech.

 

Professor Cooper has stated that, “As a legislative presence, Wilson ranks up there with FDR and LBJ.”

 

But Wilson really blew it with his first SOTU speech. 

I say that because he started this speech with the following: “The country, I am thankful to say, is at peace with all the world, and many happy manifestations multiply about us of a growing cordiality and sense of community of interest among the nations, foreshadowing an age of settled peace and good will.”

 

Some time later, the United States entered World War I.

Wilson would give five more State of the Union addresses, but he was unable to do so in his final two years, as he had suffered a debilitating stroke.

 

But the following presidents, with the exception of Herbert Hoover, liked the idea of the speech, and they continued the practice.

It was made all the more appealing by the advent of mass media, which turned what once was a message to Congress into an opportunity for a president to spell out his priorities and vision directly to the American people, instantaneously and unfiltered.

 

Warren Harding gave his to a limited radio audience in 1922, and Calvin Coolidge was the first to be able to broadcast it to a national audience in 1923. Harry Truman took his to the new medium of television in 1947; a half-century later, Bill Clinton’s was live-streamed on the Internet.

Wilson closed his first State of the Union address by expressing his hopes that the executive and legislative branches of government would continue to work closely together.

 

It will be interesting to hear the Democratic response given this year by the grandson of Senator Robert Kennedy, Rep. Joseph Kennedy III.  I think that Kennedy's response will be much more important than the B.S. we will be hearing from “The Donald”.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2018