Former Republican Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels said he wants the pageantry of the State of the Union address to be once again reduced to a written letter to Congress.
The modern State of the Union, delivered in a prime-time speech and widely televised, is a “tasteless, classless spectacle,” the George W. Bush-era White House budget director wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece published Sunday.
“Effusive, cued applause, camera-conscious backslapping, stony-faced growls of disapproval and eventually even catcalls from America’s lawmakers have drained what little was left of a serious tutorial about national challenges and priorities. What remains: a tired, farcical theatrical experience more likely to promote cynicism than citizenship in its viewers,” Daniels wrote.
Events that reflect on “common bonds and mutual obligations” help to unify the country, wrote Daniels, who is now president of the Purdue University System. But “the political mud-wrestling” over the speech amid the ongoing partial government shutdown only bolstered his argument that “it’s time for this affair to be retired,” he asserted.
Daniels called for a return to the president writing a simple letter to Congress. That had been the tradition up until former President Woodrow Wilson delivered a State of the Union speech to both chambers of Congress in 1913.
This year’s State of the Union, initially scheduled for Jan. 29, was cast aside amid a partial government shutdown fight.
“The State of the Union is not planned now,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who rescinded her invitation to President Trump, told reporters on Friday. “What I said to the president is when government is open, we will discuss a mutually agreeable date, and I’ll look forward to doing that and welcoming the president to the House of Representatives for the State of the Union, when we agree on that mutually.”
The shutdown came to an end Friday evening with a three-week spending deal, but Pelosi warned earlier in the day that the State of the Union may not go on as originally planned next week.
