The Program Is in the Previews

“The State of the Union is no longer an evening, but a month.” With these words, one of President Clinton’s chief policy advisors may have signaled the beginning of the end of a nearly century-old tradition of using the annual State of the Union message to introduce the president’s legislative agenda.

For the past several years, in the weeks prior to his annual report to the nation, Clinton has introduced a number of proposals that his predecessors would have saved for dramatic unveiling in the State of the Union address.

Two years ago, plans for extending Medicare to uninsured senior citizens, strengthening federal support for child care and additional money for civil rights enforcement were unveiled weeks before the address. Last year, pre-address initiatives included increased defense spending, tax credits for long-term care of the disabled and new money for food safety. This year’s early announcements have featured the war on drugs, gun control, new investment in inner cities and extending health insurance to uninsured, low-income families.

Why would Clinton prematurely reveal so many of his legislative ideas and drain his signature address to the nation of its attention-grabbing novelty?

He might be thinking about 1997’s fiasco, when, after working on the address for weeks and carefully priming his audience with “leaks” about what the address might say, he found his speech upstaged by the O.J. Simpson civil trial verdict. While the broadcast networks opted to stay with the president’s speech, many local news affiliates and cable networks broke away for the jury’s verdict.

“With no disrespect to the president of the United States, we will bring you the verdict as it is read,” chimed one Los Angeles affiliate as it prepared to leave the president to cover the verdict. This and other stations that shifted to the O.J. story saw their ratings soar, while network ratings simultaneously plummeted.

Although Clinton does not have to worry about another evening of O.J. during this year’s address, neither can he risk putting all of his eggs in the State of the Union basket.

The American television audience has become too fickle for that strategy. With more than 70% of American households subscribing to cable, whenever the president appears on television, an ever-nimbler audience increasingly is switching channels. Rather than trust his ability to keep Americans from reaching for their remotes, Clinton has opted to stretch out his message over the month.

Since 1995, on average, 31% of American households have watched Clinton deliver his addresses. This compares to 53% who watched Richard M. Nixon in 1969. These figures indicate that first-year presidents typically attract larger audiences--undoubtedly a curiosity factor.

President Bush also bucked the downward trend in 1991, when the just-concluded war with Iraq gave Americans a special reason to watch.

In 1998, thanks to the breaking Monica Lewinsky scandal, Clinton enjoyed his largest audience since his first State of the Union. Yet these periodic upward spikes do not mask the stark downward trend in presidents’ audiences.

The emergence of television as the ubiquitous household appliance in the late 1950s ushered in an era in which presidents enjoyed a captive television audience and frequently staked their influence in Washington on their ability to mobilize public opinion behind their policies. The rise of cable has ended this brief “golden age” of presidential television. Clinton has quickly adapted to this new fact of presidential life.

Except for his unavoidable apology to the nation, a declaration of victory in Kosovo and his obligatory State of the Union addresses, Clinton has stayed off prime-time television throughout his second term. This compares to Ronald Reagan’s 25 prime-time television appearances during the first half of his second term.

Now the president is downsizing the State of the Union address. Clinton is counting on television news to carry his message to the people. It is unclear whether a series of pre-edited, 10-second sound bites will preserve his capacity to define national issues. What is clearer is that he has little choice.

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State of the Union Ratings

Percentage of U.S. households that watched

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Source Nelson Ratings