Brad Rourke

Rearranging The Deck Chairs At The State Of The Union

As people wring their hands over the “toxic” rhetoric swirling throughout public life, a proposal from Colorado Senator Mark Udall has been gaining traction and winning approving nods from The Concerned Elite. The idea? At the upcoming State Of The Union address on January 25, don’t seat Members of Congress by party but mix them up.

This idea, originally proposed by Third Way one week ago, seeks to end the spectacle of one side of the audience standing and applauding while the other sits in stony silence. The intended result is harmony, or at least a scaling back of partisan tension.

I know that many people I respect are in favor of this. However, I think it’s just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic — a futile endeavor that distracts from the real problem.

In the first place, it will actually benefit Democrats by making it appear that the whole room is standing in applause at certain points rather than just half. In the second place, it seems foolish to think that making Members switch desks as if they are wayward elementary school children will make the class run any smoother.

The Real Problem

A more important flaw, though, is that the problem is not that we disagree — it is that we express our disagreements in ways that are disagreeable. Everything in public life feels as if it is a game of one-upsmanship and advantage-seeking.

One key way that this plays out is in the annual game of applause lines in State Of The Union addresses. At least since the Johnson administration, it has been a tradition to clap for the things that your party likes, and remain stonily silent at the things your party doesn’t. (So Johnson got notable stony silence at his mention of the Civil Rights Act.)

Now it has become tradition to interrupt the speech repeatedly, and part of the journalistic coverage involves counting these interruptions and timing them, as if the energy with which the party faithful express support for their own positions reflects something other than the energy of self-interest.

All this clapping, and the focus wasted upon it, seems to me to diminish the importance and value of the State Of The Union. A better initiative, I would propose, is for all Members to agree not to clap. Let the President give the annual update uninterrupted. Let the American people hear it in full, without the necessity of knowing how much the two sides wish to express their agreement or disagreement (save that for the spin room afterwards).

(Photo credit: Flickr user ‘dvs’.)

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3 responses to “Rearranging The Deck Chairs At The State Of The Union”

  1. Stephanie

    Frankly, Brad, this is about the 2012 election and which major party can take the lead in the polls. Unfortunately, I don’t see that the major media can be relied upon to honestly cover candidates or the issues. We rely upon new media forms to try to ascertain truth from fiction.

  2. Drew Snider

    I like the notion of remaining silent — the way some churches used to (the first time I set foot in a church was for a wedding when I was 8, and mom’s first advice was, “do not clap in church” – you can imagine my reaction at my first Pentecostal service!) — but maybe there’s something to be said for mixing up the seating during actual Congressional meetings. After all, 2-1/2 centuries of the current process (1-1/2 up here in the Great White North) has led to a continually degenerating state where the matter is not “what’s right” but “who wins”. That leads to increasingly inflammatory rhetoric — and sometimes, as we’ve seen, violence. But s’posing people from opposing political stripes were to sit next to each other, and maybe actually talk to each other about the needs and wants of their constituents? “My district needs X, Y & Z because …” “Here’s how my people think …” Maybe legislation would pass more easily with less rancor; maybe lawmakers would be more open to compromise because they’re seeing someone else’s point of view because he/she is sitting beside, not lined up across the battlefield like Civil War units; maybe the nation’s business would be less susceptible to being hijacked by a scandal, because there wouldn’t be as much muckraking. Or maybe I’m dreaming in color. But it might be worth considering.

  3. John Cooper-Martin

    Sounds like a good start, for bipartisanship. But then, it will be harder to know who’s yelling profanities, at the president. I guess I’m in favor of the tradeoff, though.

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