Ahem.

To anyone of a republican (small “r” please, Mr. Editor) sensibility, American politics frequently throws up disgusting spectacles. It throws up one most years in January: the State of the Union speech.
You know how it goes. We’re shown the House chamber, where the nation’s highest civilian and military officials wait in gathering expectation. The Sergeant at Arms announces the President’s arrival. The great man appears at last. In his progress through the chamber, legislators jostle and maneuver to catch his eye and receive the favor of a presidential greeting.
On the podium at last, the President offers up preposterously grandiose assurances of protection, provision, and moral guidance from his government, these declarations of benevolent omnipotence punctuated by standing ovations and cheers from legislators of his own party, and often from the others too, after every declarative clause.
Included in the audience in recent years have been citizens, or foreign visitors, who represent some quality the President will call on us to admire and emulate — selflessness, achievement, or support for U.S. ideals abroad. (The model citizens in these displays are known collectively as “Lenny Skutniks” after the first of them, showcased in President Reagan’s 1982 address. You even hear political wonks use this as a verb: “Karzai’s going to be Lenny Skutniked this year . . .”)
This Stalinesque extravaganza has sprouted from a tiny seed: the requirement in Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution that the President “shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”
Practically all of the development from acorn to mighty oak occurred during the twentieth century, with the most objectionable trends accelerating during the last quarter of that century.
The “annual message” (as it was called until 1945) was not in fact a speech at all for most of the republic’s history. Washington and John Adams made a speech of it, but Jefferson — correctly, of course — thought this too monarchical. The annual message was thereafter delivered in writing to Congress until Woodrow Wilson reverted to speech mode in 1913. There was partial re-reversion to the written presentation by the more modest presidents of the immediate post-Wilson era (Harding, Coolidge, Hoover), and then occasionally since (Truman’s first and last, Eisenhower’s last, Carter’s last, and Nixon’s 4th), but for most of this past three-quarters of a century the President has delivered a speech.
— We Are Doomed, pp.45-46