Let?s Abolish This Dumb, Stupid State of the Union Tradition

Let?s Abolish This Dumb, Stupid State of the Union Tradition

Thursday, February 14th, 2013

Conventional wisdom says the pomp and ceremony have something to do with the duty of the President spec?d out in the United States Constitution. Specifically Article II, Section 3, which says?

He 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?

The circus clown show we see today, therefore, may trace its roots back to the founding. We make a mistake in assuming that this means it?s faithful to it. We should be reassessing this. To coin a phrase, we ?need a national dialogue? on it. There?s been an awful lot of patchwork replacing the original quilt here.

The President does not tell Congress what to do, for starters. You can read ?recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary? in a lot of different ways, but ?recommend? is something you do when the other guy has the final say. Our current President doesn?t seem to understand this, although to be fair about it, the perversion started long before we ever heard about Him.

Also, to continue to be even more fair about it, the damage Obama is doing to the country typically results from an unhappy situation in which He really is the best president for our times. So our problems with Him, really have to do with the problems of our times. Implicit in His job as He understands it, and to be realistic about it His understanding is not a problem of misinterpretation by any means, is: Drag the country leftward, as far as possible and as fast as possible. Flank the enemy. Out-maneuver all who will oppose You, outnumber them, geld them, pressure them, bully them, dilute their influence.

This previous November, it was established that a slim majority of the country likes this. Or, a slim majority of those who bothered to show up to vote, anyway. That?s something. We still have a governmental system filled with checks-n-balances though, and those checks and balances are there for a reason. If President Obama wants to make Congress? votes go a certain way, as opposed to simply supplying recommendations, He can always run for His old seat in the Senate.

But, of course, there are television cameras. When politicians appear in front of television cameras, they use the appearance to swing the public toward their point of view, to put the pressure on their opposition in the most contentious matters. That is what politicians are going to do. Every time. It?s just a fact of life.

And so it could very well be that if we could have a ?do-over,? with the constitutional verbiage left the way it is and all politicians and cameramen and news producers acting on their incentives the way they do, but the history scrubbed clean, we?d end up precisely where we are now. And, a hundred times more, with a hundred more do-overs. That could very well be the case. But if it is, then it isn?t cause for celebration.

In our system of governance, the President is not a dictator. He is not even the star of the show. You do realize this, right? In our system, He is merely one of several players. The Constitution grants Him this monopoly in the discourse for a time, based on the premise that He is working in concert with the rest of the executives and legislators. It?s no different than the pilot of your aircraft, in fulfillment of a part of his duties as Captain, ?monopolizing? the sound space for a minute or so while he addresses you over the P.A. system. If he has some kind of conflict with the co-pilot, or the stewardesses or whatever you call ?em nowadays, or the deck crew or the luggage crew or the fuel crew, and uses this sound-space monopoly to settle that conflict in his favor, then obviously that would be an abuse of the system. I mean, I can imagine all sorts of scenarios for that, and some of them are quite entertaining. But it still is an abuse of the system. Improper utilization, for something other than its designated purpose.

Well, that?s exactly what we?re seeing happen here every year.

So why the applause?

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