President Donald Trump will deliver the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress tomorrow night. I previewed the speech on Friday. With the speech now less than thirty-six hours away, I thought I would resurface my primer on ten facts worth knowing about the State of the Union.
1. The tradition of giving a State of the Union address is rooted in the U.S. Constitution.
Article II, Section 3 stipulates: The president “shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” Although the Constitution doesn’t define “from time to time,” by tradition presidents convey that message once each year. The Constitution says nothing about when or how the president should deliver the information. Until 1934, the State of the Union message was typically delivered in December rather than in January or February. In 2022, Joe Biden became the first president to deliver an in-person State of the Union address in March, a feat he repeated in 2024. Donald Trump followed suit last year in his joint address to Congress.
2. The State of the Union address has not always been called that.
Presidents from George Washington through Herbert Hoover called their annual message to Congress just that, the “Annual Message.” Franklin Roosevelt was the first president to refer to his annual message as “the State of the Union,” which are the words that the Constitution uses, and his 1941 speech is the first to have that title. That speech is better known, however, as the “Four Freedoms” speech.
3. For more than a century, the State of the Union was delivered to Congress in writing rather than in a speech to a joint session of Congress.
George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address—or “Annual Message” if you prefer—in person in New York. (The Big Apple was the capital of the United States from 1785 to 1790.) John Adams did likewise during his one term in office. Thomas Jefferson, however, abandoned the in person speech for a written message, perhaps because he wasn’t a great public speaker. Presidents followed Jefferson’s lead until 1913, when Woodrow Wilson revived the practice of addressing a joint session of Congress. Ever since FDR, presidents have almost always used speeches rather than written messages to fulfill their constitutional obligation to inform Congress about the State of the Union.
4. Two presidents never delivered an Annual Message or State of the Union address.
William Henry Harrison and James Garfield both died before they had the chance to deliver one, Harrison from disease in 1841 and Garfield from an assassin’s bullet in 1881.
5. Ronald Reagan began the tradition of not calling a president’s first speech to a joint session of Congress a State of the Union address.
Reagan’s predecessors had no qualms about giving a State of the Union address immediately upon assuming office. John F. Kennedy, for instance, gave one on January 30, 1961, ten days after taking the oath of office. (That speech stands as the most alarming State of the Union address ever delivered. Kennedy said that the nation was at an “hour of national peril,” that “the American economy is in trouble,” “our cities are engulfed in squalor,” and “our supply of clean water is dwindling,” but that “all these problems pale when placed beside those which confront us around the world” as “we draw nearer the hour of maximum danger.” So much for the “good old days.”) Reagan, however, called his 1981 speech an “Address Before a Joint Session of Congress on the Program for Economic Recovery.” All of Reagan’s successors, including Trump, have followed that precedent and declined to call the first speech of their term to a joint session of Congress a State of the Union address. George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush called their messages “Administration Goals” speeches. Barack Obama, Trump (both times), and Biden called their first speeches an “Address Before a Joint Session of Congress.”
6. During presidential transition years, Congress can receive annual messages from two presidents within a span of weeks.
Outgoing presidents can give a State of the Union address even if the incoming president is likely to do the same. Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter all delivered an annual message in their final weeks in office, though only LBJ and Ford did it as a speech to a joint session of Congress.
7. Some presidents go short in their State of the Union addresses, some go long—very long.
Washington holds the record for brevity. His 1790 speech ran just 1,089 words. That’s equivalent to a long newspaper op-ed. Among presidents since LBJ, Richard Nixon holds the record for shortest State of the Union address. His 1972 address clocked in at a shade under twenty-nine minutes. Carter holds the record for the longest State of the Union address. His 1981 address, which he (thankfully) delivered to Congress in writing rather than in person, ran 33,667 words. That’s fifteen hundred words longer than H.G. Wells’s classic novel, The Time Machine. (Carter’s 1981 address is also the last time the State of the Union was delivered in writing.)
Last year, Trump set the record for the longest State of the Union address delivered in person, whether measured by the number of words (9,906) or by the time it took to deliver (one hour, thirty-nine minutes, and thirty two seconds). If you insist that Trump’s address last year does not qualify as a State of the Union address, then the honor of giving the longest address, whether by word count or delivery length, belongs to Clinton. His 1995 address ran 9,190 words, which took him nearly eighty-four minutes to deliver. He topped that mark in 2000 when he spoke for almost ninety minutes even though his speech was roughly 1,700 words shorter than five years earlier.
8. The prose in State of the Union addresses has gotten simpler over time.
The linguistic complexity of State of the Union addresses has declined over the past century as presidents have shifted from speaking to lawmakers to addressing the country at large. Presidents before World War II spoke at the equivalent of a collegiate level. Twenty-first century presidents have spoken at an eighth- or ninth-grade level.
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