State of the Union Speeches are Boring

Charlie Cook: “The president’s speechwriters will have started out to craft an important and thoughtful speech, determined to avoid having their boss deliver another really boring monologue that is both a laundry list of what the president wants to do and what he would do if the opposition party and special-interest groups rolled over and played dead for the rest of the year. But by the end of the process, despite the best of intentions, it will very likely sound like all of the others.”

George Condon:
“As grand as any State of the Union is, as commanding as he may be, as
loud as he can make his voice, presidents rarely are able to set the
legislative agenda in this annual event. Only a handful of times in the
last half-century have presidents been able to impose their will on
Congress.”

For insights into how they come together, we spoke to speechwriters for the last three presidents:

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