NO URL: SYDNEY WILLIAMS IS AN E-PAL WHO IS DEVELOPING A BLOG….I AM FORTUNATE TO GET HIS DAILY POSTINGS….RSK
More than anything, the State of the Union is a chance to see and be seen. Even those on the Republican side of the aisle vie for seats on the aisle, so their constituents can see them shaking hands with the President they have vowed to oppose. It is an opportunity for this President to use the soaring rhetoric, which is his greatest strength, and to bask in the applause of those who fervently admire him, as well as from those who despise him, but who do not to appear small-minded.
The Constitution, in Article II, Section 3 states: “He [the President] shall 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.” The founders would be appalled at the imperial extravaganza that annual message now entails. In the last few decades this event, of a republican country, has assumed the trappings of the royal Court at Versailles in the years just preceding the French Revolution.
Mr. Obama is fond of his voice, so he speaks for a long time, giving little consideration to the overweight and out-of-shape Congressional members and others who are required by custom to be there, and who must leap from their seats every minute or so, exhausting themselves as though they had been in a spinning class. They look like the teenage girls who once did the same thing for Frank Sinatra and the Beatles. The difference is that the girls’ enthusiasm was real, while what we see from our comfortable seats in our homes is often feigned.