President Obama delivers his State of the Union address tonight, and the nation waits breathlessly. In anticipation, The List combed through the archives of the American Presidency Project to see how the address has changed since the first one in 1790. Different themes, different vocab, but all pretty much saying the same thing: The state of the Union is great. (Except when Gerald Ford said it wasn't, in 1975.) The State of the Union Address throughout the years in numbers:
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10
References to the District of Columbia, including urgings from John Adams, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton to Congress to give greater voting rights to the District and to keep it safe.
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40
Number of George Washington references, the most for any former president. He leads Franklin D. Roosevelt (16), Abraham Lincoln (10), Thomas Jefferson (7), and Calvin Coolidge (0).
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1985
The first year the word “terrorist” was used; has since been used in 17 addresses.
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1,089
Shortest word count of any SOTU, by Washington in 1790.
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33,667
Longest SOTU word count, by Jimmy Carter in 1981.
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11
Declarations that “the state of our Union is strong."
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1
Declaration that “the state of the Union is not good.” Gerald Ford uttered this phrase in 1975. The following year, he declared the Union to be “in many ways a lot better—but still not good enough.”
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26
Mentions of “friendship,” four of them by Washington and four by Woodrow Wilson. Has been used only twice in the last 10 years.
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28
Calls for bipartisanship; first by Harry Truman in 1950 and almost every year since Ronald Reagan in 1982.
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4
Mentions of the Internet, all by Bill Clinton. (Including his statement that the Internet is “getting kind of clogged, you know,” in 1998.)
2 Comments
Deborah Rogers
It's shocking that no one has referenced Coolidge. What a shame.
Jenny Rogers
What would they say? "Let's draw a lesson from the Revenue Act of 1924..."
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