State of the Union reloaded
January 20, 2015
Back in the 1930s Americans huddled around their radios to listen to the president delivering his State of the Union address from the White House across the land. In 1965 when Lyndon Johnson became the first US president to give the speech on primetime television, people gathered around their TV sets to watch.
But those days are long gone. In recent years, the number of Americans who tune in to speech, which is mandated by the Constitution and is the key presidential speech aside from the inaugural address after an election, has been dwindling.
Last year, Obama's State of the Union - delivered during prime time and carried live by 13 major networks - scored the lowest household #link:http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2014/33-3-million-tune-in-to-watch-pres-obamas-state-of-the-union-address.html:rating# in over 20 years. While 67 million people watched Bill Clinton's speech back in 1993, only 33 million tuned in to Obama's address last year. There are exceptions, such as Obama's first State of the Union in 2009 which was seen by 52 million people, but generally the trend is clear. The audience taking in the State of the Union on television is shrinking.
Too much noise
"People are disinclined to watch the speech," said Mary Stuckey, a presidential rhetoric scholar at Georgia State University in Atlanta. "There is so much noise, so many competing voices. It is unlikely that anyone these days listens to an entire presidential speech today."
The Obama White House, already considered the gold standard in terms of voter outreach and messaging, has apparently decided to make a serious effort to try to counter that trend instead of simply standing by and watching ratings slide even further.
To do that, the Obama administration is taking key elements of the president's State of the Union message to where it believes the audience is increasingly migrating to - the Internet.
For #link:http://www.upworthy.com/cable-companies-beware-this-town-is-taking-you-on-and-others-are-taking-notice:Upworthy#, the viral website launched by online organizing guru Eli Pariser, Obama recorded a video promoting his initiative to expand broadband access. Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer took to #link:https://medium.com/@pfeiffer44/the-road-to-the-state-of-the-union-spoiler-alert-cc45fd726dac:Medium#, the snazzy publishing platform, to post two State of the Union-themed pieces while Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett advertised the president's planned push for paid sick and family leave on #link:https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-we-think-paid-leave-workers-right-privilege-valerie-jarrett:LinkedIn#, the job networking site.
"Enhanced State of the Union"
The White House also launched a new #link:http://www.whitehouse.gov/your-feedback-2015:campaign# on its homepage called "Your memo to the President," asking users to personally let Obama know what topics they want him to focus on. And as a follow-up, Obama will go on #link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awU8M3qVgZQ:YouTube# two days after the State of the Union to speak "directly to the American people online" as the White House puts it. While Obama has been doing that since 2010, this year he will sit down and take questions from three "YouTube creators" and their following.
Needless to say that the White House has already been #link:http://www.whitehouse.gov/sotu:pushing# Obama's State of the Union-related agenda on its website and all social media platforms urging users to "tune in to our enhanced State of the Union."
"I think that this approach is both smart in today's media and political environment and quite consistent with the Obama administration's media strategy up to now," said Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of American political discourse at Texas A&M University.
The goal of the White House media offensive is twofold: One, to prove to the public that Obama is all but a lame-duck president, but very much relevant and able to connect with Americans. And two, to eclipse the Republican counter-message and frame the national political discussion on Obama's terms.
Few surprises
Since many of the big issues have been advertised already, major surprises are not in store for the State of the Union.
"I think there are going to be exactly the topics he is laying out," said Stuckey. "Because one of the things about this kind of deliberative address is you don't want it to be a surprise."
That means the speech will, as is customary, have a largely domestic bent. With one huge exception: the Charlie Hebdo massacre. Since Obama admitted that he made a mistake by not sending someone to the solidarity march in Paris, ignoring it "would be to compound that mistake," noted Stuckey.
But for the experts, the ecosphere the White House has weaved around this year's State of the Union address in the Internet may anyhow turn out to be more significant than the content of the speech itself.
On par with Reagan
"It is an incredibly successful approach in terms of getting out his messages and it also represents a fundamental shift in the relationship between the press and the presidency," said Mercieca.
"For those of us who study the technology and the way in which presidents try to reach the public he is probably here doing a similar thing to what the Reagan #link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpPt7xGx4Xo##t=81:inaugural# did to visual politics," noted Stuckey.
President Ronald Reagan, a former Hollywood actor, is generally considered to have elevated #link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU-IBF8nwSY:televisual# politics to a whole new level.
Reagan shaped his image by his masterful use of the dominant medium at the time, television. Obama is trying to do the same with the emerging media of our time, the Internet.