Our State needs more Union

For those watching at home, the feel and performance of the annual State of the Union address on Tuesday took another step away from what the whole production is supposed to be. Beyond any governing substance in the words spoken by a president, the show has steadily changed, and not for the better. 

Harsh reaction to President Joe Biden’s words sprang as expected from the ranks of the new Republican House majority. The new face of the opposition over Biden’s left shoulder belonged to recently confirmed Speaker Kevin McCarthy who held to basic decorum, at times shaking his head, smiling, smirking, shushing, or applauding. Democrat Nancy Pelosi played the partisan-audience-cueing role before him, most conspicuously when she ripped up President Donald Trump's 2020 speech on the podium after he earlier declined to shake her hand.

Biden appeared game to react to heckling from the Republican gallery rather than turn the cheek and move on. When he accused loud elements in the GOP of threatening Social Security and Medicare, caucus members stood to jeer. “Liar!” screamed newly-empowered Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), reminiscent of that first “You lie!” heckle from a 2009 Barack Obama address to Congress on health insurance.

“Contact my office,” Biden said. As the back-and-forth went on, he suggested he was glad his detractors had come around to maintaining those programs: “I’m glad to see — no I tell you, I enjoy conversion.”

Everyone on both sides seemed to know that scoring partisan points and grabbing attention won’t bring an agreement on the debt ceiling, or sustain necessary social programs or work out elusive deals on immigration, or China, or “finish the job” of restoring America as Biden chose to put it. The exhibition went on anyway because that's what they do.

The State of the Union in all its pomp grew out of a simple constitutional command. Article II says 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.”

By now, some hybrid of a reality show and raucous party convention has grown up, replete with confrontation, showy clothing, defiant buttons, and honored guests arranged around political priorities. Television and streaming seem to demand all this. But do the people?

At the risk of losing flavor, perhaps a fresh and healthier alternative would be for a president to lay out and speak up for proposals that have some hope of enactment, even in compromise form, and for the Congress to listen and react later. The point, after all, is serious business, whether your citizen concerns are economic equality, border security, foreign intrusions, or education.

The public would benefit more from knowing what is proposed in the SOTU text and how Congress might deal with it than from seeing who disses whom.