Thread by @julianzelizer

Tomorrow night, President Trump delivers his State of the Union Address. He will likely talk about the “national emergency” that he says is taking place at the border and the need to unify around his “wall” agenda.

The first claim is false; the second is disingenuous. There is no national emergency. Nor has the president ever been interested in achieving national unity. President Trump is a polarizing president who aims to divide.
nytimes.com/interactive/20…

To remember a president who delivered his SOTU message during a real emergency and rallied the country to be unified, let’s go back to January 1942.

FDR addressed Congress on 1/6/1942. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese had attacked a U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. Hitler’s rise to power devastated many of America’s most important allies; fascism spread through Europe. Congress had declared war on Japan and Germany.

FDR decides to deliver the message in person, although some legislators thought that he should send in writing since the nation was at war.

Congressmen John McCormack (D) and Joe Martin (MA), the House Majority and Minority Leaders, along with Democrat Robert Doughton, chairman of Ways and Means, escort Roosevelt into the chamber.

FDR tries to rally the nation around the wartime mobilization. He outlines what it will take to defeat fascism and calls on the nation to sacrifice. The U.S. would be victorious as the “champions of tolerance and decency and freedom and faith.”

The speech starts at 12:32 pm. The SOTU Addresses were not delivered in prime time until 1965. The speech is broadcast on radio all around the country and it was heard in Europe and Latin America. FDR goes through a huge list of wartime production goals.

The president promises “total victory.”

Congress “hung breathlessly on every word” during the 35-minute address, according to The Washington Post. The room was quieter than when he called on Congress to declare war against Japan. Members trying to absorb the details of what would be needed to achieve victory.

A major theme of the address was sacrifice. Fighting fascism would require “taxes and bonds, and bonds and taxes.” He said: “In a word it means an ‘all-out’ war by individual effort and family effort in a united country.”

According to one account, FDR’s voice was “stern. His voice seemed to reflect the arduous and almost interminable hours he has been laboring; there was little in it of the tremendous reserve vibrance and gusto on which he has usually drawn in public addresses.”

FDR talks about the “united nations” who would fight for “security” “progress” and “peace” for all generations.

With this speech 1942, FDR started to popularize the term, “state of the union” as the name for these messages.
history.house.gov/Institution/SO…

The British were thrilled with what they heard. “At last we can feel we are not alone. ‘The Yanks are coming’” declared The Daily Mail.

The Senate Majority Leader said that “the American people will respond with fighting determination.” The chair of Senate Foreign Relations described it as a “superb speech, vigorous and far-seeing and with ribs of steel in it.”

In an editorial entitled a “fighting speech,” The Washington Post editors concluded: “Never before has his voice been so resonant, so full of fight, so freighted with hope for the embattled nations….”

In 1942, the U.S. faced a real national emergency and had a president who was determined to achieve unity in the name of protecting democracy. Tomorrow’s speech should not be confused with anything but more political theater from a president determined to rally his base.