John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN INVESTMENTWATCH
"Nation Worried About Having No Idea What’s Going On If There’s No State Of The Union Address"
Quite the contrary, no one ever learned anything worth knowing from listening to one of these stagey political speeches.
And the current sand-throwing fight between Trump and Pelosi has reached a farcical level with withdrawn rights to enter the halls of Congress and, in return, withdrawn rights to use government flights. The building in which Congress meets does not belong to Nancy Pelosi, and the planes officials use to go places do not belong to Donald Trump.
In general, the entire tactic of "shutting down" a national government to get legislation you want just spotlights America's inability to govern itself. And, as we know from its immense deficits and debt, America cannot even pay for the things it does legislate. It just keeps making new entries in a bad set of books to create the illusion of paying. The nation which thinks it is entitled to govern the planet literally cannot run its own affairs.
By the way, a good half or so of American Presidents did not give such a speech.
Jefferson, who had a high-pitched voice, was a terrible, self-conscious public speaker, and just hated giving speeches, instead submitted a written report. He claimed it was because the speech was too much like the King of England's Speech from the Throne.
Jefferson also was quite the subversive opponent of President George Washington and many of his practices, and it was Washington who started the tradition of the speech. Jefferson treated Washington-associated matters in much the same stubborn-child fashion as Trump treats anything with Obama's name on it.
Jefferson's practice of submitting a written report became the norm up until well into the Twentieth Century with Woodrow Wilson.
What a lot of silliness we read over this speech, an event which is genuinely insignificant at the best of times.
