Don’t Know Much About® the “State of the Union”
George Washington by Gilbert Stuart
On January 8, 1790, President George Washington delivered the first annual “Message to Congress,” now better known as the State of the Union Address. Washington’s message was delivered in person to Congress, then meeting in New York City, in accordance with the Constitutional requirement in Article II: Section 3:
He shall from 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;…
In his address, Washington raised questions of the basics of a functioning federal government and uniformity in both naturalizing foreign citizens and a system of weights and measures. But as the nation continues to debate gun control measures, it is worth noting that Washington called for “a uniform and well-digested plan” to arm and discipline a “free people.” At the same time, he also recognized the need for a standing army with “comfortable support.”
Washington spent a considerable amount of time addressing the importance of knowledge:
Nor am I less persuaded that you will agree with me in opinion that there is nothing which can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. In one in which the measures of government receive their impressions so immediately from the sense of the community as in ours it is proportionably essential.
…by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of them; to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority; between burthens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of society; to discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness – cherishing the first, avoiding the last – and uniting a speedy but temperate vigilance against encroachments, with an inviolable respect to the laws.*
Maybe Washington was the first “Education President.”
Whether the issue is gun control, immigration, or support for public education, it is fascinating to see how these issues have been fundamental to the nation’s leadership from its very beginnings.
As President, Thomas Jefferson ended the practice of delivering the Message to Congress in person; you could say he “mailed it in.” Woodrow Wilson was the first President after Jefferson to return to the tradition begun by Washington. Today., of course, the State of the Union Address is a familiar part of Washington, D.C.’s annual ritual, compete with invited guests sitting beside the First Lady. It is the speech in which a President lays out his vision for the country and announce any new major initiatives or perhaps contribute a signal phrase to the American lexicon. in 2002, George W. Bush used the speech to highlight the threat posed by an “axis of evil:– Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
*George Washington: “First Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union” January 8, 1790. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. University of California at Santa Barbara
