This Is The State of Our Union

The State of the Union is a Constitutional mandated report card the Executive Branch must deliver to the Legislative Branch once every year. It is an update of what accomplishments and failures the nations has had, where the nation needs to go, what it needs to focus on. Often times it is also a “to do” list from the Executive Branch for legislation it wants the Congress to complete in the next year and lays out not just the president’s agenda, but a roadmap of potential compromise and contention.

The State of the Union used to be a simple document, written up in an office in the White House, delivered to the Congressional offices. In time that mandated tradition transformed into one in which the president makes the journey from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, over to the Capital Building, to the House Chambers, and stands before the joint session of the House of Representatives and the Senate, and delivers the State of the Union as a speech.

In modern times, the speech became a televised event, and even more modernly internet streamed event. What was once a dull, easily overlooked, mandated function of the government has become a relatively large media moment, denoted by such lofty bits of analysis such as who was invited to sit in the gallery by who, who got to shake the president’s hand as he walks down to the front of the room, and of course who did and did not stand up during a given part of the speech.

All joking aside the SOTU speech is important, even if you’re not a political nerd who actually sits down and watches even the daily White House briefings. The SOTU, even if you’re the most cynical person around, is a window into the mind of the Executive and where efforts are going to be focused by our government, ex-parte some other event that demands more immediate attention. As citizens we should all be aware of this. For what the speech lacks in specificity, it does offer broad strokes that outline the approach that will be taken. It does show to us a satellite image of the path the President wants to drive, even if it doesn’t exactly map out the roadways and landmarks along the way. Part of our duty as citizens of a democracy is that we must be informed and at least passingly knowledgeable on these issues. Why?

Because our duty is not simply to drag ourselves out one day every two or four years to go to a polling place and cast a vote based on some political label we chose years ago. It is important to know the issues, not with scholarly depth (though that would be nice), but with at least basic intelligence to know more than just the latest talking point spouted out by either side.

A mistake we the American people have a habit of making is deflecting responsibility from ourselves and making excuses for why things aren’t the way we would like them. We hate Congress, yet we love our member of Congress and say we’ll never vote them out until they do something really bad. Congress’ approval rating is in the low teens to high single digits, and even the numbers for those say they want to vote out everyone is about 50%. However, come election time no one seems to want to vote out their own member of Congress, or just does not vote at all. We say we want the members of Congress to compromise, whatever that compromise might be, but we light our hair on fire when they strike a deal, or sign legislation we don’t like. We want them to solve problems as quickly as possible, but want it to be done slowly so we can debate it, yet we don’t like debate and just want a solution. We want our elected officials to do what is right and be courageous, even though we can’t ourselves figure out what’s “right” and punish those who don’t do as we say and fulfill our desire. We applaud those who take a stand and go against the majority, while laughing at their perceived stupidity and promptly throwing them out of office.

This is not in any way to excuse the real faults of members of government, which certainly are there. Nor is this to garner pity for them – they all certainly should have known what they were getting themselves into. No, this is about us, the American people, getting what we want. You see, its one thing to complain and whine about something when you’ve tried your best, given it a shot, or are truly incapable of effecting the outcome in any meaningful way. It’s quite another to be one who complains while sitting back and doing nothing.

There were not always two parties. I find the argument of the two-party system’s flaws to be draining. If you think the Republicans or Democrats are wrong, choose someone else. Don’t like anyone, pick the best of the rest. MAKE A CHOICE!! You’re hungry, and broke, but you don’t like what’s in the house to eat; what do you do? You pick the least bad option and eat something. You don’t sit there and starve, hoping that somehow someone might on the off chance come around and offer you a delicious meal. Don’t like the Republican or the Democrat, and think voting third-party is a waste, then evaluate which candidate is the least bad of the two and pick that one. Don’t sit on your hands and imagine that somehow all will change and somehow will right itself. It won’t. If you’ve done that, then you’ve at least made an effort for the right direction. No one is going to sit around listening to someone who complains without having an ability to at least competently state their views. A third-party won’t build if everyone keeps choosing to not vote for that candidate thinking they’ll lose. At least make a statement. Plant your flag somewhere, don’t just carry it around and snidely shout from the sidelines at those who have at least made the effort to stake out a path forward.

Listen to the State of the Union, or read the transcript of it (reading it eliminates the annoyances of the pauses for clapping, and allows you to eliminate the emphasis that is created by the camera action or the way the speech is delivered). Pick out the topics on which the speech indicates a desire for future action, identify any accompanying – or lack thereof – specific policy proposals, and spend a few days educating yourself on them so that you have at least a basic understanding of the issues and the two or more sides to that issue, by the summertime. At least know where your Senator and Representative stands on the issue and where you stand on the issue, absent as best you can manage any ideological stratification.

No one walking this Earth is perfect. Everyone will make mistakes. We should realize, and recognize, that every person is simply moving forward in the best way they know how. They may not agree with us. We may not think each other wise. But we are all trying to do the same thing – live our lives to the best of our ability. One thing we can do to help each other is not make that job harder than it has to be. We will fight, we will argue, but we can do it in a respectful way, in an understanding way, that recognizes that we don’t know the answer to all things. Our elected officials will certainly do something stupid, but we can help make that less likely if we ourselves are more informed and more knowledgeable about the things we have sent them to Washington, D.C to do. If we ourselves know just a little more as a collective people, and can speak in a more unified and intelligent voice, some of these issues that seem so big an insurmountable will become smaller and easy to overcome.

Chances are any SOTU speech will start off or culminate with a statement of the union as being either strong or some similarly affirmative position. Many take this as pure lip-service that glosses over the real problems at the given moment. To an extent these people are right, but they aren’t completely right.

The United States is a strong nation. It is strong because its people are strong and there are so many of us willing to fight, and struggle, and persevere through anything to help keep it so. Not all our moments are proud ones, not all our moments are elegant, or appealing. But hiding those, denying those faults will not make us better. The state of our union is out there for all to see, good and bad. We can shine a light on the good, as well as root the bad out of the darkness to build it up to something good.

Our union is the strongest on this Earth and it will continue to get stronger so long as we don’t forget that we the people are the representatives of this union and hold within us its future unlike any other nation. We are the promise of the future, and it is through our efforts, big or small, that the nation will persist into the future for generations to come. We have a job to do. It’s neither easy nor glamorous. It involves a lot of hard work, sacrifice, and facing ugly truth we’d like to ignore or forget. But our founders in their declaration of freedom also issued to their descendants, the inheritors of the nation they helped come into existence – form a more perfect union. We aren’t perfect. We have not now nor at any time in the past reached the mountaintop. I don’t know if we will ever get there, let alone what it will look like. But there are some markers along the way.

Let’s keep rolling on, until we pass the baton to the next generation, so they can do the same, and eventually one day our nation can be the perfect union we seek. The state of our union is imperfect, but it’s getting better, step by sometimes agonizing, sometimes brilliant, step.