In an op-ed in the Washington Post Mitch Daniels explains why we should do away with the State of the Union message. He covers many of the bases: it has an inherent propensity to become a “throne speech”, as Jefferson noted when he demurred from delivering a SOTU message, it’s a public relations opportunity from a presidency that no longer needs them, the “shout outs” that have become a standard part of the SOTU since Reagan are undignified. Its increasingly participatory quality lacks the energy and honesty of the British Parliament’s “question time” which is a daily event and is highly staged. Its institution matches the growth in the “imperial presidency”, something that should be diminished, if anything.
Under the Constitution the president’s power is supreme in conducting foreign policy, with respect to the military, and in the day to day management of the executive branch of government. Recent court decisions limiting those should be thrown out as the trash that they are.
Under our system as defined the president’s power is limited and narrowly defined. The real power is in the hands of the Congress. What makes the president powerful is Congress’s deliberate abrogation of responsibility. Steadfastly refusing to do anything means you won’t be blamed for anything other than doing nothing nothing which the members of Congress seem to be able to survive better than angering their constituents by doing things they dislike.
Congress is furiously busy in idleness but make no mistake—its members are idle. Work is defined in terms of motion. This is not new. As some of you may recall I’ve been listening to old Burns and Allen radio programs. In one exchange between George and Gracie, Gracie urges George to run for Congress:
George: I can’t run for Congress. I don’t even know what a Congressman does. I’d be sitting there twiddling my thumbs.
Gracie: And you say you don’t know what Congressmen do.
and then there was Sam Clemens’s remark: “There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress” or Will Rogers’s wisecracks “Papers say: ‘Congress is deadlocked and can’t act.’ I think that is the greatest blessing that could befall this country” and “The rest of the people know the condition of the country, for they live in it, but Congress has no idea what is going on in America, so the President has to tell ’em”, in direct reference to the State of the Union message. A better way for the members of Congress to be informed about the condition of the country would be to return to their constituencies.
Since its very earliest days Congress has been crude, crass, and fractious. There is a reason that Congress conducts so little of its business in public. If it were to do so, people would lose respect for it which in my opinion would be all the better.
