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President Biden's State of the Union speech Tuesday will be his commencement since becoming president. Just in April 2021, he addressed a joint session of Congress, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Harris behind him on the dais. Melina Mara/Puddle/Getty Images hide caption

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President Biden's State of the Union oral communication Tuesday will be his first since becoming president. But in Apr 2021, he addressed a joint session of Congress, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Harris backside him on the belvedere.

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No moment in America's yearly political calendar is and then grand or then daunting as the State of the Matrimony address, a speech the president commonly delivers to a joint session of Congress early in the year.

This yr, President Biden is due to deliver his first State of the Union address on Tuesday. The Constitution requires the president to study on "the country of the union" and to do information technology from "from time to time." Information technology has been customary for more than a century for the president to exercise this with a live speech communication earlier a joint session of Congress. Nearly all the members of the Chiffonier and Supreme Court attend besides.

Now and then, the timing set up by tradition has coincided with a period of high stress for the nation — and particularly for the president himself. And when things are especially fraught, the tension and drama in the chamber in the Capitol tin can be almost palpable.

But even when under maximum pressure, presidents have viewed the speech every bit a unique opportunity to brand their instance to the rest of the government, to the nation as a whole and to the wider world likewise.

On Tuesday, Biden is expected to use this unique opportunity to elaborate on the U.Southward. response to Russian federation'southward invasion of Ukraine, the nigh astringent accident to the security of Europe and the NATO alliance in the 77 years since World State of war 2.

While Americans are struggling with a 2-year-old pandemic and economical stresses of their own, the return of war in Europe adds a dire portent to the proceedings not seen in many years.

Sailors about the aircraft carrier U.S.Southward. Nimitz watching President George Due west. Bush's 2003 State of the Wedlock oral communication. Non long afterwards, Bush-league launched an invasion of Iraq. Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images hibernate caption

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Sailors near the aircraft carrier United statesSouth. Nimitz watching President George W. Bush-league's 2003 State of the Union speech communication. Not long after, Bush launched an invasion of Iraq.

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The last fourth dimension war clouds were this dark over a Land of the Union speech was in January of 2003, when President George W. Bush used the occasion to brand a case for invading Iraq. That invasion would happen less than two months later, overthrowing the strongman dictator Saddam Hussein. Bush argued that the Iraqi regime had been seeking a nuclear weapon and had developed other "weapons of mass destruction." He said this meant the U.S. needed to utilize all ways available, including invasion, to neutralize this threat.

In i sense, Bush-league was preaching to the choir. Congress had already bought into this assay in the fall of 2002, approving an authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) against Iraq. Some Democratic senators who supported this AUMF afterward regretted and disowned that vote.

Only at the time, the memory of the terror attacks of Sept. eleven, 2001 was still fresh and Bush's "war on terror" was still broadly popular. His approval score in the Gallup Poll had declined from its elevation of 90% but was however historically high.

Bush had as well devoted his 2002 State of the Spousal relationship largely to his "centrality of evil" analysis, identifying Iran, North Korea and Iraq as "outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical and biological weapons."

The particulars of Bush's appeal in the 2003 speech, however, would come back to haunt him. He leaned heavily on an allegation that Iraq "recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

That particular fleck of intelligence, amongst others, was later discredited. But by that fourth dimension the U.S. had invaded and occupied Iraq, overthrowing Saddam Hussein but finding no weapons of mass destruction or bear witness of their imminent development.

War and the Land of the Union

War had also loomed in the Land of the Union given by President Bill Clinton in 1999, when war had broken out in the Balkans over the Serbian province of Kosovo. Clinton portrayed the "ethnic cleansing" underway in Kosovo, displacing more than than a 1000000 Muslim residents at that place, as a course of genocide. U.S. aircraft would participate in a NATO endeavor to punish Serbia and strength a settlement.

Lyndon B. Johnson's 1966 State of the Union address was delivered as the U.S. continued to deepen its military involvement in Vietnam. -/AFP via Getty Images hide explanation

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Lyndon B. Johnson's 1966 Country of the Union address was delivered as the U.S. continued to deepen its military interest in Vietnam.

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In the decades of the Cold War, presidential State of the Spousal relationship addresses regularly referred to the need to maintain military forcefulness (both nuclear and conventional) to deter the ambitions of "global communism." In the 1960s and early on 1970s, this recurring element in the oral communication featured a specific message on the war in Vietnam. In these years, presidents combined an assertion of the war's importance to national security with vague promises to end it.

Lyndon Johnson, who ordered the largest escalation of the war in 1965, concentrated his 1966 State of the Union address on defending that decision. In event, he acknowledged the degree to which the war had upstaged all the other events of the previous year, including enactment of the Voting Rights Human activity, Medicare and Medicaid and a host of other "Great Society" programs he had kickoff laid out in his previous State of the Union speech a year earlier.

Impeachment in the air

Three presidents in the last fifty years take come to the Capitol to evangelize a Country of the Matrimony with impeachment hanging over them. Two — Pecker Clinton in 1998 and Donald Trump in 2020 — were addressing the very Firm members who simply weeks earlier had voted to impeach them. These presidents were also addressing the same members of the Senate who were even then weighing their votes to convict or carry.

Yet neither Clinton in 1998 nor Trump in 2020 mentioned any of these facts in their State of the Union addresses. Both addressed the articulation session in evident confidence that the Senate would not muster the necessary 2-thirds vote to remove them. That turned out to be true both times.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rips up pages of the State of the Matrimony speech afterward President Donald Trump finishes his accost on February. 4, 2020. The post-obit twenty-four hour period, the Senate acquitted Trump in his get-go impeachment trial. Mark Wilson/Getty Images hide caption

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rips upwardly pages of the State of the Wedlock spoken communication after President Donald Trump finishes his address on February. 4, 2020. The following 24-hour interval, the Senate acquitted Trump in his starting time impeachment trial.

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Both Clinton and Trump preferred to act as though impeachment was not important to the nation as a whole. The unmistakable subtext in each case was the president's need to convince the nation equally a whole that impeachment was non important.

But Trump's speech also had the spectacle of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi standing backside him and angrily shredding the text of his speech after he had concluded. Trump appeared to have refused to milk shake her hand he arrived at the belvedere.

A slightly dissimilar tack was chosen past President Richard Nixon in January of 1974, when he delivered the second Land of the Union of his second term. Nixon did not dwell on the scandal and the multi-front end investigation that had already acquired several in his inner circle to resign. Merely he addressed the outcome by telling Congress "one year of Watergate is enough." That plea fell on deafened ears.

"Watergate" was a catch-all term for the ongoing investigation of various illegal acts by Nixon's 1972 reelection campaign and for subsequent White House efforts to cover upwardly those crimes. The Senate's "Watergate committee" had already held weeks of televised hearings on the widening scandal, and Nixon was actively resisting subpoenas for tape recordings of his Oval Office meetings.

In the months that followed, impeachment hearings went forrard in the Business firm, the Supreme Court ordered the tapes released and Nixon resigned in Baronial of 1974.

Moments of partisan drama

In that location accept also been times when a president addressed a Congress that had been substantially reconstituted in the previous Nov'due south election. In 2011, for case, President Barack Obama faced a Congress with many new faces. There were 95 new members in the Business firm, 85 of them Republicans (iii-fourths of whom had replaced Democrats in their districts). At that place were 13 new senators, all but one of them Republicans, and half of them had taken seats from the Democrats.

Something similar had happened to Bush just four years before, when in 2007 he institute himself facing Democratic majorities in both House and Senate later on having his ain party in command of both since 2003.

Clinton had faced a turnaround that was arguably even more dramatic when he came to deliver his 1995 Land of the Wedlock. The comfortable majorities he had in both chambers for his first ii years in office were cached in the Republican landslide of November 1994.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (above right) laughs and applauds during President Pecker Clinton'south State of the Union address on Jan. 24, 1995. Republicans had simply taken control of both chambers of Congress in November'south midterm elections. Luke Frazza/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

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Business firm Speaker Newt Gingrich (to a higher place right) laughs and applauds during President Bill Clinton'south Country of the Union address on January. 24, 1995. Republicans had simply taken control of both chambers of Congress in November'south midterm elections.

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Clinton was looking at the start Republican-majority House in 40 years, led by an ambitious new speaker named Newt Gingrich, who sat in a chair behind the president. The newly Republican Senate'due south leader in 1995 was Bob Dole, who would exist the GOP nominee against Clinton the following year.

In that one ballot, Republicans took over the majority of Firm seats and Senate seats (and governorships) in the Due south for the kickoff time since Reconstruction. Republicans have maintained this edge in the region ever since.

Other historical notes

It volition be widely noted that next week's State of the Union will be the commencement in U.S. history when women occupy both the constitutional offices that entitle them to be seated behind the president. As vice president, Kamala Harris is also the formal president of the Senate, so she will be seated beside Pelosi, who first welcomed a president to the chamber in that function in 2007.

(Both women were in function and in place when Biden spoke to a articulation session in April 2021, merely that was more of an introduction and in any event non a formal State of the Union report.)

Over the years, there accept been many dramatic and even pivotal moments associated with the State of the Union written report. In 1862, when the Civil War was nearing the end of its second twelvemonth, Abraham Lincoln told the Congress:

"The fiery trial through which we pass volition light united states down in accolade or dishonor to the [last] generation... In giving liberty to the slave we clinch freedom to the free – honorable a like in what we give and what we preserve. Nosotros shall nobly save or meanly lose the last all-time hope of earth."

But that report was not heard past anyone at the fourth dimension of its commitment because information technology was a written document and not a speech, every bit was the custom of the era.

George Washington delivered his reports as speeches, just in the 19th century the prevailing format became a written certificate. Woodrow Wilson bankrupt that pattern with his first State of the Union in 1913, about the end of his start yr in part. He connected his in-person tradition until a stroke made that incommunicable in 1919. Since and so, every president has delivered the voice communication alive to a articulation session.

Radio began broadcasting the speeches live with President Calvin Coolidge in 1923 and they take been televised since President Harry Truman in 1947. Johnson'due south spoken communication in 1965 was the first to exist televised in prime number time.