I don’t get puzzled easily by something puzzling. But I have never quite figured out why professional pundits insist on telling TV audiences what the President will say in his State of the Union speech before he says it.

In the first place, it plays to an obsessively curious crowd; which is rather like a benign disease.

In the second place, most pundits are presumptuous enough to try to make us believe they have a direct line to the Presidential psyche.

In the third place, these talking heads assume that the whole universe is anxious to know what the President will say, even though most of the universe could care less.

In the fourth place, if we all just shut up (including the pundits) and relaxed and waited a day or two, we would all know exactly what the President DID say.  But then, of course, the pundits would have little else to talk about, expect maybe where they would work if they got fired for not preempting the President’s address.

But by the time this article gets printed, if ever, it may be a non-article, that is, there would be no need to print it because the President had already made the speech.  Of course, the pundits will dutifully cover both political parties’ reactions to the address, but the glamour, excitement, and thrill of preempting it would be gone. And then, what’s a popular pundit stuck with simple reporting job, to do?

Disliking this “preemptive” business as I do, I nevertheless would like to run a few prognostications through you, mainly to demonstrate what makes me hate the idea of this presidential guesswork by prominent journalists who take our over-the-back-fence communication needs for granted.

The program, featuring preemptive revelations, included such TV new luminaries as Blitzer, Zahn, Roesgen, Bash, and several others whose names escape me. But what didn’t escape me was some of the comments that came through loud and clear.

One such comment went thus: “The President will talk big picture, big theme, and that theme tonight will be the whole idea of leadership around the world. And to that end, the President will say, ‘The road of isolation and protectionism may seem broad and inviting, yet it ends in danger and decline.’” (He will not mention where HIS road is leading us.)

“When it comes to Iraq, sluggish response to the Katrina disaster, and pocketbook issues like health care costs and energy,” said one pundit, “the President will speak in very blunt terms, certainly for effect as a former oil man. He will say: ‘America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technology.’” (He will skip the part about alternatives to oil being needed for a long time, while his administration has been dragging its feet on the issue,)

Another comment heard was this: “The President, at the beginning of his speech, will pay tribute to Coretta Scott King the civil rights leader who passed away today. We’ve been talking about how they have been amending and updating the President’s speech all day,” (No surprise. With MLKing highways, schools. a national holiday honoring him, and his likeness on the front page of every newspaper in America, Bush would be amiss not mentioning his wife.)

This comment was especially incisive: “It wasn’t a great year for the President. but tonight he can remind people of all the different jobs he has, and the main job, which is command-in-chief.” (Don’t look for Bush, however. to mention all the jobs he’s failed in. It might make the public more nervous than it’s been.)

Here is a more stringent comment heard: “Tonight, especially in that environment, he has to talk about Iran, Iraq, Hamas, the situation in North Korea. That’s a major part of the job description.” (That’s interesting, calling the hellhole we opened up a job description.)

And this one: “He will try to persuade America to break its addiction to oil, and he will also renew a pledge to fight tyranny abroad.” (Very good.  Too bad he will not include a line or two about fighting a more subtle kind of tyranny here at home.)

Finally, a man in Columbia, South Carolina, who was asked whether he was going to watch the President’s State of the Union speech on TV, summed it up in a more insightful way: “Nope. It’s nothing but 15 minutes of whitewashing over the truth by the President, 10 minutes of self-gratuitous applause by corpulent, pork barrel Senators and Congressmen, finished off by 10 minutes of sour grapes by the Democrats. Why bother.”

And with that I may not watch the President either.  Hell, I already know what he’s going to say.

James T. Moore
http://jamestmoore.us/