State of the Union: Partly Cloudy, High Likelihood of Tedium

Tomorrow, an American president, invited by Congress, will deliver his annual address to lawmakers on the state of the union, and literally not one person in the world really gives a shit. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be covered! Oh, it will be covered.

Every news outlet, if it hasn’t begun already, will write its Five (Or Six! . . . ??) Things To Watch For in Obama’s State of the Union Speech articles. Mostly by digging up last year’s version and switching a few words around. At least, that’s my plan. Here’s a brief outline of how all of those articles, if they’re being honest, will come out:

1. GUNS He will ask Congress to do something about guns and they will not.
2. IMMIGRATION REFORM He will ask Congress to pass immigration reform and they will not.
3. TAX REFORM He will ask Congress to consider bipartisan tax reform and they will not.
4. INCOME INEQUALITY He will call for a more reasonable distribution of income and income distribution will remain more or less the same.
5. CLIMATE CHANGE He will call for something something to be reduced to something something by 2030 and it will not be reduced to something something ever.
6. OBAMACARE Give it a chance! (YOU HAVE NO CHOICE, LOL.)

And then, the sideshow. Democrats will stand up and cheer on every point while Republicans stay seated and go BLARGH! and old John McCain will fall asleep. A freshman Tea Partier will shout something inappropriate and it will be the topic of conversation for days, along “what ever happened to civility?” lines. Speaker John Boehner will . . . let’s see . . . cough? . . . John Boehner will cough and someone will share a GIF of John Boehner coughing, while ~250 dumb Twitter account variations of @JohnBoehnersCough will be set up and forgotten within three hours. Also on Twitter: everyone will be completely fucking annoying (myself included) and some ex-Bush administration official will tweet something like “Obama is black” and be dubbed a racist for a week.

Then we get the responses! Yes, Reader, that plural is no typographical error. As the State of the Union speech itself decreases in importance each year, the number of responses to this uncared-for address go up. Right now, we’re looking at four (4) responses: Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers will be delivering the traditional opposition party’s response, Sen. Mike Lee will give the “Tea Party response,” Rand Paul will talk about Rand Paul for a while, and Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison will give what he’s dubbed the “people’s response” to his own president. “That’s just democracy, man,” Ellison says of it all. Indeed. And in this great democracy, with so many response-viewing options, the one that gets the most attention will be the one in which the responder most visibly GAFFES by, say, having a sip of water.

And then, by Thursday, everyone will have moved on and forgotten that the whole thing even happened. Because here’s the thing. It’s hard to set a political agenda for an entire year in one speech in January, no mattered how gifted the orator. Obama and the Democratic Party may decide in mid-February that there’s another strategic tack for them to take heading into the midterms and abruptly switch course. A scandal could arise, the specter of military intervention in a foreign country could suddenly “pop up,” another “Fast” Eddie Snowden could take the crown jewels and require the formation of a new task force. The agenda changes more fluidly than ever and the people don’t. So focus on a GIF of John Boehner coughing without guilt if that gives you a rise; the “serious stuff’ will be forgotten even sooner.