Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Trump may have the lightest number of legislators in living memory to hear his State of the Union address. More than a few Democrats have made clear they don’t want to hear a word he has to say and are boycotting the Address.
No surprise why. Trump has moved heaven and earth to etch in stone the most unorthodox, unconventional, and precedent shattering presidential administration the nation has ever seen. He has three clear goals that he never once tried to hide. One is boosting his Grand Canyonesques megalomaniacal ego. Two, totally dismantling the nation’s economic safety net. Three, re-encoding racial division into the nation’s fabric.
As other Presidents he will take full advantage of the moment since traditionally a State of the Union Address can boost the stature, prestige, and power of their presidency. It can even bump up a President’s approval rating by a point or two.
Presidents also know that the opposition’s response to their speech is feeble, pale, and little watched or counted by Americans. In some cases, the opposition response can even backfire. This happens when the rebuttal comes off across as a mean-spirited, partisan, petty rant against the President. The GOP got deservedly plastered with that charge in just about every rebuttal it gave to Obama’s State Addresses. This year a handful of progressive Democrats in addition to their boycott will hold a counter People’s State of the Union on the Capitol Mall.
If Trump stays on script, the odds are that his address won’t do what these addresses are supposed to do, and that’s fine-tune and administration’s policy, draw a roadmap for the nation of where his administration is going, and add luster to the president’s image. Just look at how other Presidents have done that. President James Monroe announced the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln flatly called for the end of slavery in the rebellious states. This was the prelude to the Emancipation Proclamation he issued a year later. Woodrow Wilson warned of the dangers of impending war in 1913. Franklin Roosevelt outlined the famed Four Freedoms in 1941. Lyndon Johnson unveiled the outlines of his Great Society program to fight poverty in 1965.
Bill Clinton unveiled his health care reform plan in 1993. George Bush in his State of the Union speeches in 2002 and 2003 prepped the nation for the Iraq invasion. Presidents quickly latched onto the media to give their State of the Union speech more exposure and political wallop. Calvin Coolidge gave the first radio broadcast in 1923. Truman gave the first televised broadcast in 1947.
These were all conventional presidents and politicians who played within the system’s ground rules, respected the traditions of office, and gave a nod to bi-partisan, country, not party, let alone ego and self, first in their addresses. None of that applies with Trump. He’s picked endless fights with the Democratic Party leadership and any GOP legislator that dares show a spark of independence, the press, and the courts. His string of accomplishments includes trying to gut consumer protection regulations, pecking away at the Affordable Care Act, terrorizing lawful immigrants to the country, and loud threats to swiftly send anyone who sets foot in the U.S. without papers back to where they came.
When he gets to his signature campaign issues of job creation, health care, and tax reform, don’t expect much in the way of details. Instead, Trump will fill up the teleprompter with his stock rhetorical fluff about bringing jobs back to America, whacking down taxes even more for the rich and corporations, and getting rid of Obamacare.
There’s also not a lot he can really say about foreign policy besides bluster about making America a military muscle man that strikes fear in friend and foe alike, maybe making China the whipping boy on trade and currency, and claiming that he’s got ISIS on the permanent run. The one nation and leader, though that you can bet, will either get short shrift, if not totally missing from Trump’s foreign policy diatribe, will be Russia and Putin.
If one counts, Trump almost certainly will smash the Guinness Book of Records for the number of times that he’ll use the pronoun “I” in referencing anything about his presidency and the nation. It will be a case study in how one man sees himself as the all-knowing, always right, fount of personal and political wisdom. There will be no room on his throne to share even a sliver of the limelight with anyone not named D. Trump. In this sense, it can rightly be said that Trump’s non-State of the Union will be an address not of the State of the Union, but the state of Trump.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His latest book The ICE Shooting Scorecard (Amazon ebook and Middle Passage Press) He hosts the weekly news and issues commentary radio show The Hutchinson Report Wednesdays 6 PM PST 9 PM EST at ktymgospel.net. and Facebook Livestreamed at https://www.facebook.com/earl.o.hutchinson