ON TUESDAY EVENING, regrettably, amid much splendor,
spectacle, butt kissing and CO-Grade drama, the president of the United
States will be welcomed(?) by a joint session of Congress. He will be cheered
and applauded like a homecoming conqueror, and, before an audience of lawmakers,
diplomats, military officers, and dignitaries with markedly brown noses, will
read his teleprompter to deliver his State of the Union narrative in a live
nationwide broadcast. There will be a vacant chair on the Diaz to represent
people killed by gun violence...a feckless, juvenile--even infantile and
fetid gesture clearly designed to offend as many as possible. What it will
display is Obama's racial hatred for the United States of America and its white
population. It will be the most preposterous and gaudy ritual in American
political life yet. I suspect that the only reason the U.S. Air Force...the
fondling puppy frolicking about the president's feet...doesn't fly "the Missing
Man" flight over the Capitol Building is that he didn't think of it. With the
stock market diving to test depth, let's watch the tax-payer funded
pageantry of Obama celebrating the economic crisis the economists are
predicting...the economy he is responsible for damaging. Thomas Jefferson got it right. Article II, Section 3 of the
Constitution obliges the president to periodically "give to the Congress
information of the State of the Union" and to "recommend to their Consideration
such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." George Washington and
John Adams elected to do so in person, though nothing in the constitutional
language requires a speech. But Jefferson detested the "pompous cavalcade" to
Capitol Hill, which in his view smacked disturbingly of the British monarch's
annual "Speech from the Throne." Very early in his presidency, therefore, he
let it be known that his first
annual message to Congress, "like all subsequent ones," would be in writing. He
was as good as his word, and the change was widely
applauded. It isn't a healthy practice. What the Constitution's
framers intended as a matter-of-fact directive that presidents supply
lawmakers with useful information and policy proposals has become an
antidemocratic extravaganza that would have horrified Jefferson and now has the
general public looking forward to it with the same excitement in which they look
forward to their next hemorrhoid attack. The State of the Union broadcast fuels
the cult of the presidency. It encourages the delusion that the nation's "state"
can somehow be embodied by a single individual, a Great(?) Leader capable of
crafting a sweeping political agenda that will bring the millennium. The problem
here is that our sitting president is not a Great Leader...except maybe to the
Muslim Brotherhood.The lone saving grace of the modern State of the Union
Address is its reputation for tedium. Last year, fewer than 32 million viewers tuned in to the speech, a decline of more than 20 million since President
Obama's first State of the Union in 2009, and the lowest ratings since Bill
Clinton's final address in 2000. To political junkies, the "pompous cavalcade"
may be irresistible. To the vast majority of Americans, it's just a bore. It
bores me to even think about it. Twilight Imagery, Inc. |
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