Ahead of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night, let’s take a look back at the first State of the Union address – and no, it wasn’t delivered by George Washington.
Yes, President Washington did, as the Constitution stipulates, deliver annual updates to Congress. However, technically those weren’t State of the Union addresses.
Presidents’ annual messages – both written and delivered in person – weren’t officially known as State of the Union addresses until 1947, according to the House of Representatives’ history gurus.
The speech had been informally called the State of the Union during the latter years of FDR’s presidency, but it was President Harry Truman who got the honor of delivering the first official State of the Union address.
His speech was also a huge deal because it was the first time the President’s annual address to Congress was televised! But it was still not the prime-time affair that now interrupts our regularly scheduled programming. In fact, it wasn’t in prime time at all – it actually was televised in the afternoon. The speech got a reschedule in the LBJ years.
Truman’s speech focused on labor and the budget and home construction and farmers. It also focused on a concept many in Washington seem to have given up on: Collaboration.
“The Congress and the President, during the next two years, must work together,” Truman, a Democrat, told his largely Republican audience.
We’ll see if President Trump makes a similar plea to the Democrat-controlled House on Tuesday night. And while you wait, take a look at the video of Truman’s 1947 speech in the newsreel above.
