On Speaking at the State of the Union

What I'd Tell Biden if He Were My Client

Every so often I offer reflection on the State of the Union (SOTU), not in terms of policy, but as a public speaker and a writer. I've linked the transcript, because reading a speech can give us clarity about the speech act itself and what it was intended to do.

1. TOO LONG. Clocking in at just barely over an hour, it was too long as a speech, but not for this President. It's not that he's a great communicator. He's not. But a persistent criticism of Biden is that he is old and tired. Therefore, the speech length itself was an attempt to do what all speeches have to do: Overcome objections. Anticipating and overcoming objections is key to speech making and speakers fail more often than not to take it into consideration.

Had Biden’s speech been 37-minutes, as was George W. Bush’s first SOTU, Biden’s opponents would argue he lacked the stamina of the previous President whose last SOTU was 1 hour and 22 minutes. A good speaker knows what her listener is thinking and the arguments they are likely to make.

Also, the first 13-minutes was on Ukraine, which I doubt was as prominent in the speech 7 days ago.