The State of the Union address has been delivered by an American president since 1790, when George Washington included matters like “certain hostile Indian tribes,” the “promotion of science and literature,” and the addition of the state of North Carolina to the Union.
Things have changed in the 225 years since the first State of the Union, but the tradition remains – the speaker of the House formally invites the President to speak before a joint session of Congress and review the country’s year. While the address and subsequent opposition party’s response nowadays is seen as somewhat ceremonial, the speech this year was a chance to tell some good news for once and declare that the crisis has passed, said Seth McKee, a Texas Tech associate professor of political science.
McKee said Obama is feeling "vindicated" after six years, and the address was a chance for him to take some credit.
"I think the main takeaway was, after six years, he’s been proven right on a lot of things," McKee said. "Maybe some of that’s a natural comeback when you have a Great Recession, but he’s taking credit for it nonetheless."
Even though the president was in a surprisingly jovial mood on Tuesday night - "There was banter! In the State of the Union!" - which some didn't expect after the repudiation in the 2014 midterm elections, his main speech topic had him relaxed.
"I didn’t think that was the tone he would strike," McKee said, "and then I sort of reflect afterwards, and I go, ‘Oh yeah, lame duck. Great economy.’ When you've got a really good economy, it’s going to make everything better for all of these politicians, even if nothing happens, because the American public will be happier. So in that sense, I should have known, he’s sort of emboldened by that."
The focus of much of the president's speech, the economy has been in a recent upswing, relieving Obama of some of the pressures he's faced during his presidency, McKee said.
"The economy really has taken off in the last couple months," he said. "Unemployment is around 5.6 percent now, the stock market is soaring. Things are going great economically, and he’s going to steal all the credit he can for that, because presidents also get the blame undeservedly."
Choosing to focus on what the president termed as "middle-class economics" - taxing the wealthy while giving tax breaks to the middle and lower classes, as well as cheaper childcare and affordable higher education - Obama's point of the speech was optimism. But the president's annual address is noted as much for what it doesn't say as what it does, and what Obama left out of the speech managed to make headlines as well.
"The economy's improving, but you have things like Social Security, which are always underfunded; healthcare, more people are insured, but it's still an issue."
"It was very interesting, [not] in terms of him talking about it, but the sequence of the speech, that the situation in the Middle East with ISIS has not improved, it’s diminished," McKee said. "He didn’t address that on the front end, he wanted to talk about the economy and how rosy it looked. We know that the situation there is very serious, and so I think that was something that he wanted to move around."
As much a tradition as the speech itself, the official response by the opposition party - the GOP - also noted what was left unsaid. Iowan freshman senator Joni Ernst (who gained notoriety during her campaign for her particularly porky ad) was selected as the official respondent. Official responses in the past weren't usually this "conciliatory," McKee said, but Ernst, as a new member of the Senate, played it safe.
"Some of the other responses that weren’t the official, like Rand Paul’s (R-Ky) were very aggressive," McKee, who has taught at Tech since 2013, said. "But hers was striking a very conciliatory tone, not that she agrees with hardly anything says or would support it, but she’s fresh on the scene and so you play it safe."
McKee warned that partisan gridlock is still to be expected, and if the recent turnover of congressional seats is any indication, Obama's optimism for the next two years will be be tested by grappling with Congress.
"I think he felt somewhat defiant but with a good attitude, because he is truly a lame duck. He knows he's got two years left, and in the domestic arena, I doubt he gets anything big through such a Republican Congress."
"I would expect that you’re going to see a lot of 'small-ball politics,'" McKee said. "In other words, you’re going to see compromises on things that aren’t terribly important, aren’t terribly consequential. It’s a really strange dynamic right now in American politics, because, chances are, Congress and the President get hardly anything done. But if the economy continues to improve, again, I think the general person in the American public will still be satisfied."
In his penultimate address, Obama declared the State of the Union strong, choosing to focus on an optimistic economy and empowering the middle class, McKee said. But foreign policy threats and gridlock between Congress and the President threaten to challenge Obama's confidence.
