The Guardian is reporting that Obama has just given his last State Of The Union speech. But won’t he still be President this time next year? Even if only for another week. So surely next year’s should be the last?
(Maybe this is better placed in GQ.)
It is likely there won’t be one next year. Since Reagan entered office, no President has offered a State of the Union address in such waning days of an administration. It is not technically required on an annual basis, only “from time to time.” Nor is it required to be an in-person speech, though this has been the conventional practice in recent decades.
I actually looked it up this morning: it appears the general practice is for the incoming president to give the speech in February, as Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Reagan did during their first full month in office.
Edit: that cite says that these speeches were not technically state of the union speeches. I’m not entirely clear on why not, but it does appear they served a similar purpose at any rate.
It wasn’t given in person for a long period in our nation’s history. Washington and Adams delivered their speeches in person before Congress. But Jefferson was a poor public speaker so he sent written reports and this became the tradition. It wasn’t until Wilson in 1913 that a President again delivered the speech in person.
When Obama gave his first speech to Congress right after taking office in 2009, CNN did not call it a “State of the Union Address,” but a “Presidential Address to Congress.” I don’t think “State of the Union Address” is ever used as its “official” name; it is called that because Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution says that “(The President) shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union.”
If somebody wants to call the first one a State of the Union Address, nobody is stopping them from doing so; in fact, Obama started his speech by saying that this was the eighth time he was speaking on the State of the Union.
I was told that, more or less, the inauguration took the place of a SOTU, both in terms of only one event can happen at this time, and in the former doing the latter’s job, only better.
If we agree to “from time to time” then we agree that no specific duration is actually given.
If SOTU is roughly half future looking, then, reconciling these two, wouldn’t the president elect’s ((for clarity)) first speech suffice?