So you're going to the State of the Union
just have fun with it
I have never attended a State of the Union under Joe Biden. I could have in 2021 — I was offered a seat in the press gallery but I was out of town and it wasn’t technically a State of the Union. But the tenor of the event doesn’t really change by administration. It’s the same pageantry and the same people with a different guy behind the podium.
But anyway, I’ve been twice and so I feel alright telling you about what it’s like to go to a State of the Union. The first year, I was in the chamber and I had the best seat in the House — right above the President. I could look down and see the top of Donald Trump’s head. That was back when I was writing for Playboy and I had this sketch graph (which holds up) in my piece on the night.
From above his hair looks golden, and there’s a pronounced bald spot on the right that widens like a gash where his exaggerated comb-over begins. When he delivers rhetorical points, he punctuates them with his fingertips, from above it appears that he’s picking bits of lint from the air.
The second year I went to the State of the Union, I wasn’t in the chamber — which means that I didn’t really attend the president’s address. But if you’re on Capitol Hill during the event, only about ten percent of the experience is what the president says in his speech. The rest of it is in the details.
Of the details: first, it’s cold in Washington in the beginning of the year. So wear a coat. Wear a scarf. Dress well, you might accidentally be on television a lot tonight. But as you approach Capitol Hill in the cold, you’ll want to stop — stand there in the middle-distance and watch the lights of the Capitol dome twinkling in the cold air of the early evening. Just stand there for a minute and take in the cold breath of the trees in the darkness and the fact that you get to peek in on history. 1
You have to get to the Capitol before the president’s speech because they lock it down while he’s there, nobody in or out. If you attend the State of the Union as a member of Congress or a Supreme Court justice, you’re on the floor. Everybody else — press, guests, diplomatic corps, cabinet members — sit in the galleries. Oh, except there are a few photographers who sit in the aisles of the House chamber, photographing the president on their great-big cameras that look like directed-energy weapons.
And nobody except the credentialed photographers are allowed to take photos. Not the congressmen or the congresswomen or the guests or the press. I suppose the president could take a photo but he never has.
At any given time during the State of the Union, I’d bet that at least a quarter of the people in the room are looking at their phones. Maybe that’s too high an estimate, but it’s a lot. The members are texting their staff and each other. The reporters are reading the text of the speech (which is released just before the president delivers it) and a lot of the guests are beginning to get over it.
Many of the congressmen have been boozing but you won’t notice them drinking during the speech. They might be sipping whiskey from coffee cups but then again, they’re probably just drinking coffee. If you get too close to some of them afterwards, you might smell the booze in the air around them.
And all the real pomp of the SOTU happens afterwards anyway.2 There’s a big rope line in Statuary Hall where all the cabinet members and guests and Supreme Court justices walk while the press stands across the red-velvet rope, howling questions at them. The vibe is a little bit who are you wearing, but more who are you wearing it for? — it’s half political spin room and half press briefing and half Met Gala. Another note here: chew gum. These are tight quarters, shoulder-to-shoulder. You don’t want to be the guy on the rope line with bad breath.
Anyway, that’s probably the best part, because it’s all over and you didn’t get blown up. The designated survivor turned out to be unnecessary. And everybody is in a good mood because they’re either going to bed or going out and it’s not every day you get to go to the State of the Union. So the rope line is boisterous. I remember that’s where I had the most harrowing eye contact of my entire life — I met eyes with a woman named Gina Haspel who was then the CIA director and she had this aura that made you want wanted to shit yourself and then confess it.
But then you walk outside into that old feeling like it was all just a dream. You get to leave and see the Capitol lights twinkling again in the cold behind you. Or maybe you don’t walk outside. Maybe you stick around. My favorite State of the Union memory is sitting in the balcony above Statuary Hall, drinking a bit of something at the end of the night, looking down into that old emptying marble-floored room and thinking my god, if this isn’t nice then what is?
John dos Passos did this really good sketch of Washington at night and he has a beautiful bit about the Capitol. I’ve read it a ton of times but I don’t know what the piece is called and I don’t have it with me right now. It’s in the Katherine Graham book.
I’m focusing on all the superficial bits of the State of the Union for this piece. But obviously there are huge potential consequences of that night — tens of millions of people watch this speech every year, the president has a once-a-year ability to shape his message directly to Americans. But but but — if the president is going to announce something, however minor, that will shape America’s foreign or domestic policies, that announcement has almost certainly been previously leaked to the press in a way that the White House believes is most effective. So, by the time we get there, it’s not really news.