Get hype, yall. President Obama plans to spend the weeks leading up to his State of the Union speech traveling across the country to promote different themes from it, a new approach by the commander in chief to the annual address to Congress. In previous years, the administration waited until the day before the speech to disclose what the president planned to talk about, hoping that the element of surprise increased its news value and reach. Typically, Mr. Obama went on the road the day after the address, like the two previous presidents, to push his agenda. But starting on Wednesday, according to the White House, Mr. Obama will begin a three-day, three-state trip in which he will lay out new executive actions and legislative policy proposals for higher education (Tennessee), housing (Arizona) and jobs (Michigan). “With a new Congress returning to D.C., the president will act next week to lay out specific new actions and preview new policy proposals that will be included in his State of the Union address to make sure that all Americans benefit from the economic recovery,” the White House said in a statement released on Saturday. The State of the Union address will be on Jan. 20. While the approach may be different, the issues are the same ones Mr. Obama has been struggling to get Congress to focus on for several years. The practice of waiting to reveal the State of the Union Message until right before the address dates back as far as Woodrow Wilson, one of the first presidents to use the annual reporting requirement to Congress as an opportunity to give a public speech. Before Wilson, presidents typically sent a letter or statement to Congress. In 1993, President Bill Clinton started traveling across the country after the State of the Union address to make his case directly to Americans. “It was touted as an example of how Bill Clinton felt so strongly that he wanted to take his message to the people, not just the people in Washington,” said Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian. “It was part of an undercurrent in which you had an active new president who was young and energetic.” The administration has not said whether Mr. Obama plans to do any additional traveling after the speech. But officials said they had changed their approach because they wanted the president to contrast with, and perhaps overshadow, Republicans, who will be taking over control of the Senate when the new Congress convenes on Tuesday. In the first few weeks of January, the Republicans plan to hold votes on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline and to try to repeal Mr. Obama’s chief legislative policy, the Affordable Care Act — two issues the administration believes are partisan and backward looking. By pushing the White House’s agenda earlier, officials hope to build on the momentum they believe they created with a string of bold announcements at the end of last year — like the executive action on immigration and the reopening of relations with Cuba. Those measures coincided with one of the most significant increases in the president’s approval ratings in his second term. “The president is eager to get to work, and looks forward to working with the new Congress on policies that will make sure middle-class Americans are sharing in the economic recovery,” the White House said. “There are a number of issues we could make progress on, but the president is clear that he will not let this Congress undo important protections gained — particularly in areas of health care, Wall Street reform and the environment.”
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 20:44:54 +0000
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