No Wonder the Ratings Are Low
Frankel, Jonathan
No Wonder the Ratings Are Low by Jonathan Frankel Thomas Jefferson refused to give a State of the Union Address. Maybe that wasn't such a bad idea. In November 1978, five of President...
...The metaphor war We owe the idea to the British, who traditionally have the monarch address the opening of Parliament...
...cabinet table where- they belong: I ptp Soviet anthem until 1943...
...Then came Woodrow Wilson...
...The slogan was new but the idea was old...
...Everything changed...
...It was under FDR that the number of applause lines and fumbled words became one of the marks of how successful or unsuccessful the speech was...
...You should...
...The State of the Union Address has become Jonathan Frankel is an intern at The Washington Monthly...
...Nixon was even more dramatic,- proposing to disband an the departments:but four—Justice, State, Treasury-, and Defenseand replace the rest with the Dep 'netts of "Human Resources," "CoMmunity • Development...
...Just to round out the slogans, I should mention Carter's crowd-pleaser that wasn't...
...That was also how Ford heralded his New Realism and Nixon his New Partnership...
...They tried some combinations with "groundwork" and "building blocks" and even considered scrapping "new" for "improved ." After about an hour of brainstorming, Hertzberg came up with the "New Foundation ." The test-tube slogan was filed away for two months until a week before the speech, when it was plucked from a file cabinet and became the centerpiece of the address...
...Across the country, ratings were low...
...Nixon's speechwriters liked the idea, too, so they strung six "this can be"s in a row in 1971, seven "we believe's in 1972, eight "five years ago"s and nine "we will"s in 1974...
...The crash and burn of the New Foundation might have spelled the end of "new," but Ronald Reagan gave it new (oops) life...
...Who was this new partnership between...
...In recent years, the State of the Union has become what James David Barber calls the Johnny Carson show of presidential addresses, complete with its own guest stars...
...a collection of jerry-rigged slogans, mix-andmatch metaphors, and pet ideas...
...Where we're going, we don't need roads," he said in his 1986 message...
...The New Challenge part was original, but the Second American Revolution bears a strong resemblance to Nixon's New American Revolution...
...If you guessed federal, state, and local government, you're almost right...
...Early on they decided that it should be two words and that the first should be "new," harking back to the political slogans of yesteryear...
...I can heal: it alreadr...
...In the back of my mind," Shapiro says, "I was thinking, 'I just know FDR didn't do it like this...
...We] dropped it into the end of the 1978 State of the Union speech, but it failed to attract any notice, partly because we didn't do any backgrounding on it...
...That said, Nixon still couldn't resist launching his own...
...The next.year he wanted to merge Commerce and Labor into one Department of Business and Labor...
...The war on poverty, the war on misery, the war on disease, the war on hunger...
...Ignoring congressional outrage, he announced he would address the legislature in person and did so every year for six years until he became ill...
...We must declare and win the war against the criminal elements which increasingly threaten our cities, our homes, and our lives ." But the lines of battle got confused in the next day's New York Times headline: "Nixon Pledges War on Pollution in State of the Union ." When they are not declaring war, presidents love telling us what's new...
...While other presidents have quoted from works like Paine's Common Sense and Tocqueville's Democracy in America, Reagan found a gem in Spielberg's Back to the Future...
...HisRepublican successors ventured only sporadically down Pennsylvania Avenue...
...The framers at our Constitutional Convention founded the President's Annual Message, as it used to be called, with little doubt about its usefulness, writing it into Article II, Section 3 with no recorded debate...
...Franklin Roosevelt, however, seized upon the idea of delivering his own messages, adding to them his brilliant flair for the spoken word...
...Maybe FDR didn't, but lots of other presidents did...
...wasting literally millions of work...
...Russell Baker accused Carter of trying to "squeeze a last bit of political value out of the poor, tired old 'new' on the chance that there might be a little toothpaste left in the tube...
...The next year, he topped that with ten straight "we have"s and ten more "we should"s...
...When Congress didn't oblige him, he offered different slogans a year later for the same idea—the New Partnership, the New Direction, and the New American Revolution...
...The address's name changed to the State of the Union Message, and radio, and later TV, started broadcasting it...
...Johnson began nine straight sentences with "I propose" in 1965 and then nine "I recommend" s in 1966...
...Natural Resources," and...
...The speech's royal lineage so vexed the farmerrepublican Thomas Jefferson that in 1801 he broke with Washington's precedent and refused to deliver the Annual Message in person...
...Repetition has since gone out of style, but the catchiest idea of the LBJ years stuck: the war metaphor...
...But the biggest "new" in the 1970 speech was New Federalism, Nixon's plan to return power to the states...
...The first slogan I tried to sell to [Carter] was the "Beloved Community," said Hendrik Hertzberg at a 1983 conference...
...Nixon repackaged the idea under the War on Pollution and the New Federalism...
...ments stayed, and-the hnreaueracYgrew...Whit's : in store for this year...
...Ike waged War on Disease in 1954, but the 1960s were the heyday of the social war...
...So the five writers wanted an overarching slogan for the address...
...COM-i MissiOn reforms to: elitninate.wastea.nd imprOve governments management practices...
...But despite the clear original intent, there has been controversy...
...Sure, it has all the trappings of a national drama—Supreme Court justices make a rare public appearance, the doorkeeper of the House announces the president's arrival, cameras pan a crowded and attentive chamber—but the truth is the State of the Union relates less and less to the state of the union each year...
...Throughout the nineteenth century, the Annual Message was little more than a memo...
...It was all part of the make-thepresidentforward-looking campaign that spawned other State of the Union winners like the Orient Express (Dulles to Tokyo in two hours maybe, $500,000 tickets definitely) and the space station ($30 billion, at best...
...Do you recognize the phrase "the time has come...
...Economic Development...
...The tithe hascorne to protect their longneglected rights and give them a..seat-: at: the...
...in 1970: "The time has also come for better emphasis on developing better ways of managing what we have...
...In his 1982 address, in addition to calling for another New Beginning, Reagan asked for adherence to his year-old call for a New Spirit of Partnership...
...It will not be a short or easy struggle, no single weapon or strategy will suffice, but we shall not rest until that war is won" Subsequent addresses gave gloomy reports from the front...
...Instead, he sent a written statement to Capitol Hill...
...Reagan in 1985: . "We are moving ahead with :Grace...
...While Ruman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy generally kept their messages detailed and dull, Lyndon Johnson dramatically transformed the address by switching it from noon to prime time in 1965 and, in doing so, introducing the TelePrompTer to the congressional chambers...
...For his part, Reagan proposed abolishing the Education and Energy departments...
...The big memo became the big speech, studded with rhetorical flourishes and shopping lists of programs the president wanted...
...Woodrow Wilson started with his New Freedom, and we passed through Roosevelt's New Deal and Kennedy's New Frontier before the first "new" program popped up in a State of the Union...
...Meanwhile, the Energy...
...We've heard a great deal of overblown rhetoric during the sixties in which the word war has perhaps too often been used...
...Carter's turn came in 4978: . "I know the American people . are 'sick and tired 'of 'federal' paperwork and red taper And finally...
...in 1971: "The time has come to take a new direction...
...Fallows and Paul Jensen, fresh from the tennis court and still sporting their whites, were joined by Hendrik Hertzberg, Walter Shapiro, and Robert Rackliff...
...This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America," LBJ proclaimed in the 1964 address...
...The night before, the president had embarrassed himself in a television interview with Bill Moyers by being unable to cite a coherent theme to his presidency...
...The New Foundation eventually died an ignoble death in a hail of women's undergarment jokes...
...If there is one area where the word war is appropriate it is the fight against crime...
...In 1966, LBJ suggested combining 35 separate agencies into a Department of Transportation...
...proving:our national defense means.:helpingonri veterans...
...Reagan included in the New Partnership branches of the federal government...
...In November 1978, five of President Carter's speechwriters gathered in chief speechwriter James Fallows's White House office to begin a preliminary draft of the State of the Union Address...
...Without many initiatives to back it up, the slogan itself became a target...
...Johnson clearly preferred wars, but in 1965 he suggested a New Partnership between federal, state, and local governments to preserve the environment...
...Daniel Patrick Moynihan exacerbated Carter's problems when he whimsically noted that New Foundation appears in the first lines of the communist "Internationale," the The Cabinet Shuffle Cabinet jockeying is another State of the Union favorite...
...In fact, Nixon's 1970 address was big news for newwatchers...
...Most Of these proposals were offered, in the name Of cutthig government_ Said LIM in 1966: "We will ruthlessly attack waste and inefficiency: . Nixcin followed with tins declaration in 1973: "If we:have to continue to expand the federal government at the rate of the past several decades, will consume us entirely" Ford added three years later: "We are...
...In 1968: "The time has come when we must get to those who are last in line...
...In fulfilling his constitutional obligations, Reagan has introduced heroes in the balcony, like crash-victim savior Lenny Skutnick and Harlem antidrug crusader Mother Hale...
...And that's not all...
...He declared the 1970s a time for New Beginnings, offered a New Road for America, and advised a New Approach in our dealings with Latin America...
...Ladies' underwear With his first address, President Carter demanded both a New Spirit and a New Partnership between "those of us who lead and those who elect ." That went nowhere, so the next year, relying on phrasemakers Fallows, Shapiro, and Hertzberg, he went whole hog with the New Foundation...
...If you want the public behind you, declare war...
...Once they started, they couldn't stop...
...toOktor Reagan to -reiterate his call to make: the Veterans Administratien a eahinetrlevel agency...
...and Education depart...
...In the House chamber, Republicans yelped and hollered, and Democrats applauded cooly...
...jag hours costing taxpayers and, consumers lions of dollars because of bureauctatie red taPe...
...In 1970: "It is time for a New Federalism in which . . . [power] will begin to flow from Washington back to the states and the people of the United States" In 1971: "The time has now come in America to reverse the flow of power and resources from the states and communities to Washington . . . Striking out on his own in 1976, President Ford called "for a fundamentally different approach, for a New Realism that is true to the great principles on which this nation is founded ." Between the branches of government, Ford declared, the nation needed a New Balance...
...In 1985, he tried New Freedom and then added, "The time has come for a great New Challenge, a Second American Revolution of hope and opportunity...
...In his first address, Nixon vowed to wage war on war metaphors...
...In other words, they forgot to tip off the press to make a big deal out of it...
...The press had by this time dubbed Reagan's New Spirit of Partnership, New Federalism...
...Reagan wasn't done...
...With his presidency under siege in 1967, he dropped to a mere five "let us"es...
Vol. 19 • January 1988 • No. 12
