DCECA members respond to the State of the Union

After President Joe Biden’s first State of the Union address, media outlets turned to a number of DCECA members for their reactions and analysis. Here are some of the highlights:

Jean Card, a GOP consultant and speechwriter in former President George W. Bush’s administration, and co-host of the Bipodisan podcast, told Newsweek:

“The opening was strong, but most of the speech was a typical, boring SOTU laundry list. Imagine how powerful this speech would have been if it had only been 15 minutes long—ten on Ukraine, five on the need for us to unite as a country.”

The laundry list format is of course a enduring tradition in the SOTU form. More on that below.

Over on FOX News, former State Department speechwriters David Wilezol and Rob Noel each had specific criticism of what the speech didn’t do.

Wilezol, who came to the State Department with Secretary Rex Tillerson and now runs Seventh Floor Strategies, had some specific pros and cons:

“The best thing President Biden said tonight was his call to fund the police — an act of leadership to help stop left-wing radicals in his own party from setting policing policies. And on the foreign policy front, President Biden sounded appropriately tough as the commander-in-chief and genuinely sympathetic to the plight of Ukrainians who are fighting for their lives. But that won’t make up for the Administration’s posture of weakness which helped provoke Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

“And except for a couple passing references to China, which are not nearly enough, this speech was lacking in addressing other national security matters. That’s not surprising, given the disaster the Biden administration created on our southern border and the rude awakening that awaits Americans if the administration successfully re-enters the indefensible Iran nuclear deal.”

Meanwhile, Noel, who joined Wilezol at State under Secretary Mike Pompeo and now runs the Washington Writers Network, a ghostwriting agency, echoed Card’s criticisms of the form:

“The intro on Ukraine worked well enough, but boy did he move on quickly, and not to anything particularly compelling or new. As a technical matter, the speech felt strung together and disjointed, with cram-ins and jumpy transitions. The substance amounted to a dry list of policy points, like it was geared toward lawmakers in the room rather than people at home. He missed multiple chances to bring ideas to life with examples or audience shout-outs. The conclusion was too safe and forgettable for such a historic time. Politically speaking, while he may have avoided losing ground, he certainly didn’t gain any. And that makes it a miss.

Ask any speechwriter, and they’ll tell you that the State of the Union is the worst speech in politics. But how did we get here? And can’t some visionary writer with the President’s ear fix that?

Probably not.

In a fun piece from The Atlantic in 2013, former White House speechwriters remember their strain in vein to get the annual laundry list down to more of a sticky note of items to pick up at the corner store. Former Clinton speechwriter and now partner at the West Wing Writers Group Jeff Shesol, was once an idealistic newcomer to the tradition:

“When I had just gotten there, to the White House, and I was really full of what I thought were fresh ideas, I wrote a memo arguing for a tightly thematic approach to the State of the Union and to finally reject the laundry list, make an argument for something, and let a lot of other stuff fall by the wayside…I made my case in a couple page memo and I was told, essentially: ‘You’re adorable.'”

As it turns out, the State of the Union, in all its build-by-committee, name-check-and-shout-out glory is probably here to stay. In 2022, at least President Biden attempted to keep it to one subject for a solid ten minutes at the outset.