State of the State of the Union
Twenty-ish years since politics broke me
When I was a kid, I remember watching the State of the Union address every year. My father was a sixth-grade teacher, and also extremely interested in politics, so it was definitely going to be on, and by the mid-80’s I was paying enough attention to politics on my own that I would also tune in. I remember laughing about Tip O’Neill appearing to just openly sleep while Ronald Reagan was speaking, which shows that even forty years ago, I was a huge dork.
(When I Googled to check the spelling of O’Neill’s name, I was reminded that he did a Miller Lite spot with Bob Uecker. The 80’s were very strange.)
I kept on watching the speech annually all through the 90’s, when I was living in the DC suburbs going to grad school. The other people who rented rooms in the house where I lived for most of that time thought it was weird that I would watch it, but again, it was practically required watching to be able to follow lunch conversation the next day. Bill Clinton was a bit of a windbag, but weirdly effective all the same— his speeches tended to be overlong laundry lists of wonky policy stuff, but he could put it over surprisingly well.
Sometime in the early 2000s, though, W. Bush broke me. The combination of policies that I found appalling and his speaking style just became intolerable, and I stopped watching altogether. I think I tuned into one or two of Obama’s State of the Union speeches, because I liked him both as a President and a public speaker, but once the habit was broken, there really wasn’t any going back. Besides, SteelyKid arrived in August of 2008, and it’s just a lot harder to get fired up to engage with a televised speech when you’re dealing with a sleepy toddler (or two, from 2012 on).
So, from the mid-80’s point where this was a significant Event, we’ve ended up in a place where my reaction last night was “Oh, hey, I guess the State of the Union is tonight…” I honestly feel a little bad about that, as if I’m actively contributing to the slow degradation of American political culture, but only a little bad. American politicians have done way more to degrade American political culture than my infinitesimal contribution to the ratings of a televised speech could possibly do.
I did read the NYT transcript of the speech— I’m not totally checked out— but there’s not much there that makes me feel like I missed out. (I was mildly interested to see that it seems to be a real transcript of what Biden said, faithfully reproducing some thing that seem like minor stumbles, rather than a copy of the prepared text of the speech.) I’ve heard enough of him speaking that there are places where I can clearly picture his voice and manner, but it’s a whole lot faster to just read the text than to wait through all the applause breaks.
That’s a thing that I kind of blame Bill Clinton for— I’m sure Reagan wasn’t above stunts and pandering, but when I think all the way back to that era, I don’t remember quite as much of the performative applause and shout-outs to random guests that bog down modern State of the Union speeches. I definitely remember Clinton playing that up, though, and Bush even more so. I feel like there’s also been the same ratcheting of partisan intensity as everywhere else— it’s not enough for members of Congress to just applaud a line any more, they have to make a big show of standing up. Or not standing, as the case may be. It makes everything take much longer than there’s any need for.
I could definitely do without the heckling, but that’s another genie that’s never going back into the bottle. (Unless, I don’t know, has anyone tried getting Lauren Boebert to say her name backwards?) I guess it’s of a piece with the general coarsening of our politics over the decades, and we’re probably not too many years out from coordinated efforts to shout things down. Which will suck.
Mostly, though, this is just a sad reminder of a process of disillusionment. Way back in the 80’s, the State of the Union seemed like an important and borderline solemn civic ritual, and watching it felt like part of my duty as an engaged and educated adult. These days, it’s just tawdry political theater, and I want nothing to do with it. And I’m probably in the top quartile of political engagement, relative to the population as a whole. I don’t know how we find a way back from that.
On that cheery note, here are some buttons:
And if you want to share more uplifting memories of States of past Unions, the comments will be open.