For all the legacies that American politics has bequeathed to the world, one that rarely gets acclaim is its linguistic legacy. Many words that originated from American politics have permeated our general lexicon.

One would be hard pressed to complete a day without multiple uses of the word “OK,” not just in the United States but also around the world. Martin Van Buren was nicknamed “Old Kinderhook” simply because he hailed from Kinderhook, N.Y. Van Buren became known as “OK” for short. During his 1840 reelection campaign, his supporters created “OK clubs.” Although the expression OK had been around for some time, Van Buren’s campaign popularized the expression. Van Buren’s political adversaries mendaciously claimed that OK originated from his predecessor and ally Andrew Jackson. They alleged that Jackson was a poor speller, and that Jackson believed that OK was the abbreviation for “all correct.”

Origins of the word “booze.” Van Buren’s major opponent in the 1840 presidential campaign was William Henry Harrison. Harrison’s campaign gave the world a new term and a new saying. Whisky distiller E.G. Booze promoted Harrison’s campaign by selling whisky in log cabin-shaped bottles. The term booze became synonymous with whisky. Also in that campaign, Harrison supporters rolled a 10-foot globe from one campaign rally to the next to the chant of “Keep the Ball Rolling.” Hence was born a popular expression. Ironically, the linguistic legacy of the Harrison campaign trumped any legacy of the Harrison presidency. Unfortunately, Harrison died of pneumonia just 32 days into his term.

“The first lady.” President Zackary Taylor coined the term “first lady” while delivering a eulogy at the funeral service for Dolly Madison. Taylor said of Madison: “She will never be forgotten, because she was truly our first lady for a half-century.”

In 2000, after conceding the presidential election to Texas Governor George W. Bush, Vice President Al Gore told the American people he would “mend some fences literally and figuratively in Tennessee.” U.S. Treasury Secretary John Sherman coined this phrase in 1879. He told an audience in his native Mansfield, Ohio: “I have come home to look after my fences.” While Sherman likely meant that he was coming home to look after the fences on his farm, the line came to mean that he was trying to consolidate political support in his home state.

John Sherman was not the only member of his family to add to the American lexicon. In 1884, there was an active effort by some Republican Party activists to draft former Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman to seek the Republican nomination for President. Sherman stated definitively: “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.” This unequivocal language left no wiggle room for Sherman to explore a candidacy. This absolute language is today called a “Shermanesque statement.” When an individual says he/she will not run for a certain office, reporters often ask if the candidate will make a “Shermanesque statement” that they will not run.

The term “teddy bear” was named after President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1902, the president accepted an initiation by Mississippi Governor Andrew H. Longino to join a bear hunting expedition in the Mississippi Delta. The president had an unsuccessful hunting trip. The nationally acclaimed hunter Holt Collier was one of the guests on the trip. He was also serving as an animal tracker for the president. Collier managed to captured a bear cub, and instead of shooting it, he hit the cub on the head with his rifle, and tied it to a tree. He wanted the president to shoot it so the president could boast of a successful hunting trip. When Roosevelt saw the little bear, he refused to shoot it, arguing that it would not be a fair fight. Political cartoonist Clifford Berryman got word of the episode and published a cartoon of Roosevelt declining to shoot the bear. Ever the opportunists, candy store proprietors Morris and Rose Michtom made a stuffed bear and coined it “Teddy’s bear.” It is now simply called “teddy bear.”

The term “goody-goody” was originally coined in the 1890s as a term of derision for “good government guys,” or “goo-goos.” These “goody-goodies” were politicians who supported government reform and an end to government graft and corruption.

In 1916, rising star U.S. Senator Warren G. Harding (R-OH) delivered the keynote address at the Republican National Convention. In that address, he popularized the term “Founding Fathers.” Although Harding had uttered the phrase in front of a local audience, this was the first time he had used the phrase in addressing a national audience. Harding was elected President in 1920, and used the term “Founding Fathers” in his 1921 inaugural address.

The term “Cold War,” describing the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union after WWII, was coined by financier Bernard Baruch in 1947 at the unveiling of his portrait in the South Carolina House of Representatives. Baruch was a native South Carolinian, and when using the term Cold War was referring to relations between management and labor. In that speech, Baruch intoned: “Let us not be deceived — we are today in the midst of a cold war. Our enemies are to be found abroad and at home.” The media began using Baruch’s term to refer to the relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States, a war not fought on the battlefield.

“The GOP.” Today, the acronym GOP (which stands for Grand Old Party) is synonymous with the Republican Party. The term has an interesting history. In fact, the acronym was originally used by the Democratic Party. It was coined by a loyal Georgia Democrat in 1878. The term became synonymous with the Republican Party after the 1888 presidential election, in which Republican Benjamin Harrison defeated incumbent Democratic president Grover Cleveland. The Chicago Tribune, sympathetic to the Republican Party, declared: “Let us be thankful that under the rule of the Grand Old Party… these United States will resume the onward and upward march which the election of Grover Cleveland in 1884 partially arrested.”

GOBBLEDYGOOK! The term “gobbledygook” was coined by former U.S. Representative Maury Maverick (D-TX 1935-1939). Maverick was serving as the head of the United States Smaller War Plants Corporation during WWll. Maverick had little forbearance for technocratic language that he could not understand. Accordingly, Maverick wrote a memorandum to his employees saying: “Stay off the gobbledygook language. It only fouls people up. For Lord’s sake, be short and say what you’re talking about … anyone using the words ‘activation’ or ‘implementation’ will be shot.” The word “gobbledygook” was the brainchild of Maverick, imitating the noise a turkey makes.

A “Sister Souljah Moment.” An unlikely American whose name has become part of American parlance is rapper Sister Souljah. In her single, “The Final Solution: Slavery’s Back in Effect,” Souljah says: “If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?” Souljah was invited to address the Rainbow PUSH Coalition run by Civil Rights activist Jesse Jackson. Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, the likely presidential nominee for the Democratic Party, addressed the audience. Clinton told the crowd: “If you took the words ‘white’ and ‘black,’ and you reversed them, you might think David Duke (Former KKK Grand Wizard and Louisiana Gubernatorial candidate) was giving that speech.” This was a political masterstroke in that it distanced himself from Jackson, who was seen as a liberal ideologue by many centrist voters who Clinton was assiduously cultivating. In addition, there was no discernable deleterious electoral impact regarding Clinton’s support from the Democratic base. A “Sister Souljah Moment” now refers to any political candidate who challenges their own base with the intent of winning centrist voters.

The above words and expressions are just a few of the linguistic contributions American politics has given to the world. Although these words are used freely today without much thought, the words were quite bizarre when originated. “OK.” Enough of this “gobbledygook!”

Throughout American history there have been many instances of resolutions passing the U.S. Congress almost unanimously but for a few dissenting votes, occasionally even a single vote. While viewed as mavericks in their own time, these lone voters have sometimes been vindicated by history, despite the contemporaneous political fallout.

In 1937, U.S. Representative Maury Maverick (D-TX) was the only Southern Democrat to vote for federal legislation disallowing lynching. Congressman Maverick stated: “I think it’s time that the South as well as the North condemn lynching.” This proved to be a politically lethal statement for a Southerner to make at the time. Despite the fact that history vindicated Maverick’s once unpopular position on this issue, his position did not sit well within his congressional district and he was voted out of office in the primary election.

Interestingly, independence is apparently in Maury Maverick’s gene pool. His grandfather was cattle rancher Samuel Maverick, who, because of his independent nature, caused Texans to label anyone who was independent-minded as a “maverick.”

In 1964, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to give President Lyndon B. Johnson a blank check to pursue military action in Southeast Asia. This abdication of Congressional authority allowed the president to escalate forces in Vietnam without coming before the U.S. Congress. The House passed the resolution without a solitary dissenting vote. As the drumbeat for war grew louder, two U.S. senators resisted the march to war, voting against the resolution. Wayne Morse (D-OR) admonished his colleagues for not officially declaring war as is mandated in the U.S. Constitution. Morse said: “I believe that within the next century, future generations will look with dismay and great disappointment upon a Congress that is now about to make such an historic mistake.” The other dissenter was Ernest Gruening (D-AK) who admonished that the resolution would result in the nation: “sending our American boys into combat in a war in which we have no business, which is not our war, into which we have been misguidedly drawn.” This view is now mainstream thinking when Americans look back at the Vietnam War. However, at the time, both senators were marginalized.

After the incalculable loss of blood and treasure in Vietnam, many members of Congress tried to atone for their votes for the Gulf or Tonkin Resolution. U.S. Representative Tip O’Neal (D-MA) later said that his vote for the resolution was the only vote he “regretted.” He said that while he had doubts at the time, he also believed that on national security matters he must support the president.

Sometimes standing alone can even result in death threats to a member of Congress. In 2001, after the September 11 hijackings, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution granting the president the authority “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.” At the time, support for an invasion of Afghanistan (whose government was harboring al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden) was widely popular in the U.S. The only member of the U.S. Congress to vote against the resolution was U.S. Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA). Few Americans had analyzed the potential unintended consequences of giving the President the authority to send a secular Army into a Muslim nation, and the attendant blowback. In fact, the House approved the resolution after just five hours of debate on the floor. Lee stated at the time: “At least minimally, we should be able to know which nation we’re planning to attack and have some input into that. We should know what the exit strategy is.” Because of that vote, she received death threats, and the Capital Police Department dispatched officers to provide her with 24-hour protection. Today, the war in Afghanistan continues, and is the longest war in U.S. history. In addition, U.S. presence in Afghanistan continues to act as a recruiting magnet for al Qaeda and their coefficients.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 hijackings, the U.S. Congress passed the U.S.A. Patriot Act. Once again, the nation rallied around its leaders, and had little forbearance for talk of civil liberties. Ironically, the legislation was not even available for members of the U.S. Congress to read prior to voting on it. The only dissenting vote in the U.S. Senate was Russell Feingold (D-WI). While Feingold supported many provisions of the Act, he objected to the greatly expanded surveillance power of the federal government. Though it received de minimis attention at the time, the Act provided law enforcement with the authority to enter a private residence without receiving the permission of the homeowner. While the provision was placed in the legislation under the auspices of fighting terrorism, the preponderant use of these warrants has been applied to unrelated drug cases. Today, certain provisions of The Patriot Act are opposed across the political spectrum, and Feingold’s position is no longer on the fringe.

In 2012, the U.S. Congress overwhelmingly passed a resolution imposing harsh sanctions upon Iran. The sanctions were sold to the American people as a way to destabilize the Iranian regime and to force Iran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in its investigation of an alleged nuclear program. Only six members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted against the resolution. They were U.S. Representatives Justin Amash (R-MI), John Duncan (R-TN), Tim Johnson (R-Ill), Walter Jones (R-NC) Ron Paul (R-TX) and Dennis Kucinich (D-OH).

The sanctions are debilitating Iran’s economy. The nation’s currency, called the rial, has dropped about 80 percent in value, making it hard for Iranians to procure necessities. Unfortunately, the sanctions provide an expedient scapegoat for the Iranian government: They can blame the U.S. Government for their economic problems. Moreover, the sanctions can inadvertently be providing an additional recruiting magnet for al-Qaeda. In the end, it is possible that the unpopular votes cast by the aforementioned U.S. House members will be vindicated over time.

It is always easy to vote with the majority, especially when the vote is near unanimous. The few dissenters often suffer political heat and are excoriated and ridiculed as gadfly’s in the political process, and are usually marginalized as well. However, sometimes history has proven that these dissenters had great foresight. As 1952 and 1956 Democratic presidential nominee Adlai E. Stevenson reminds us: “All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.”

Critics of Barack Obama often label him as a socialist, a term of derision in American politics. Socialism is viewed by many Americans as an extreme brand of liberalism. Accordingly, as a political tactic, Republicans try to tether Democrats to this label, just as Democrats try their best, equally unfairly, to tether Republicans to the most extreme forms of conservatism.

In the case of Barack Obama, not only is he not a socialist, but in many ways he is the antithesis of a socialist. In fact, self-avowed socialists are less than enchanted with Barack Obama and often protest his policies.

Contrary to popular belief, few economic systems are truly capitalist or socialist. Most are mixed economies with elements of both private enterprise and public ownership. Socialism is a system wherein the population of a nation controls the means of production, not private individuals. There are many socialist elements in the U.S. including public beaches, public transportation, and public parks. Concomitantly, there are numerous capitalist elements, as evidenced by the millions of active businesses operating in the U.S.

An example of a leader who came to office and swung the ideological pendulum toward Socialism was French President Francois Mitterrand who assumed office in 1981. He called his domestic legislative program “the rupture with capitalism.” The altarpiece of the Mitterrand agenda was the nationalization of 38 French banks.

Barack Obama has done nothing to move the ideological pendulum in the direction of socialism. In fact, he has been a tribune of private industry, often saving private businesses from bankruptcy. By contrast, Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, by establishing Social Security in 1933, and Lyndon B. Johnson, by making Medicare the law of the land in 1965, swung the ideological pendulum in the direction of Socialism.

In his first year in office, Barack Obama authorized $80 billion from the Troubled Relief Assets Funds to loan to General Motors and Chrysler to keep them out of bankruptcy. The result is that two Fortune 500 companies benefited directly from Obama’s actions. A socialist would have submitted legislation to the U.S. Congress, proposing to nationalize the nation’s automobile industry, putting its ownership into public hands.

One could argue that the bailout was “crony capitalism” in that the two automobile companies, endowed with highly compensated lobbyists, received the loan while many other companies went bankrupt. Shoring up private companies is not socialism. In fact, it is the antithesis of socialism.

One year later, Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordability Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. The act requires every American to have health insurance. This act does not nationalize the healthcare industry, but instead provides government subsidies to private insurance companies. In effect, the nation’s health care industry received about 31 million new customers courtesy of Uncle Sam. Furthermore, the legislation does not eliminate the partial anti-trust exemption that the industry benefits from. In effect, it allows healthcare organizations to operate similar to monopolies in the area of consolidation.

A socialist would have introduced legislation to nationalize the American healthcare industry, effectively eliminating the nation’s private health insurance market. Americans would lose the option of purchasing health insurance on the private market, and Medicare would be extended to every American. All Americans would have full dental and medical insurance provided to them by the federal government.

Ironically, Obama’s plan is very similar to the one offered by Republican President Richard M. Nixon in 1974. Nixon’s plan, like Obama’s plan, was a comprehensive Health Insurance Reform Program which would mandate that all Americans have health insurance, with the federal government subsidizing those who could not afford it. Nixon said in his 1974 State of the Union Address: “The time is at hand to bring comprehensive, high quality health care within the reach of every American.” Ironically again, the Democratically controlled U.S. Congress did not move on Nixon’s plan, arguing that it would be a boon to the insurance industry.

If Obama were truly a Socialist, one would think that actual Socialists would be singing his praises. In fact, the opposite is true. Brian Patrick Moore was the presidential nominee of the Socialist Party USA in 2008. He proudly wears the Socialist label and gets offended when he hears Obama being called a socialist. For Moore, Obama is “an insult to socialism.” Moore is one of Obama’s most vociferous critics. Moore calls Obama “a corporate lackey owned by interest groups” and says that Obama “supports programs that benefit the status quo and protects the powerful capitalist system.”

It is quite evident that private corporations have benefited from the Obama presidency. Alternatively, under a socialist system, these corporations would be nationalized. In reality, Obama’s policies are the antithesis of socialism. If one is insistent on labeling Barack Obama, perhaps former U.S. Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) comes the closest in terms of accuracy. He declares that Obama is not a socialist but a “corporatist.” Paul maintains that Obama takes “care of corporations and corporations take over and run the country.” That may be rhetorical hyperbole, but the larger point is that rather than working to nationalize the American economy, Obama has ministered to the needs of private corporations, providing them with support and capital.

Not only is Barack Obama not a socialist, he is, in many respects, the antithesis of the ideology of socialism.

he president is referred to as the leader of our country, and the leader of the free world. Few Americans give that phrase a second thought. This is exactly what some delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia feared. Edmond Randolph warned that the presidency was “The Foetus of Monarchy.” His fellow conventioneer, Patrick Henry, feared the office “squints toward monarchy.”

Today’s understanding of the presidency is essentially that the occupant is our Supreme Ruler. He is almost omnipotent. Thousands of Americans gather when the president appears in public to see him in person. He is treated as a rock star or a demigod.

The founders’ concept of a limited presidency with specific enumerated powers is largely forgotten. The founding fathers set up a system of checks and balances amongst the three branches of government (legislative, executive, and judicial). The U.S. Constitution balances power among these three branches of the federal government. By design, the president is not a superlative figure but a Constitutional equal to the other branches

The original concept of the American presidency was known as the president of the Continental Congress of the United States. This was largely a ceremonial office. Its occupants, beginning with Peyton Randolph in 1774, were members of the Continental Congress, elected by their colleagues to preside over Congressional sessions. The powers were so limited that Henry Laurens resigned the post because he concluded he could wield more power as a rank-and-file member of “the body.”

The framers of the U.S. Constitution granted the presidency more powers than the original presidency, but concomitantly feared that the presidency, with its potential glitz and glamour, might become monarchical.

Today, the American presidency is the kind of office Henry and Randolph warned us against, and the Congress itself is complicit in the perilous expansion of presidential powers. Not since World War II for example has the Congress exercised its responsibility under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the U.S. Constitution to Declare War. Numerous times Congress has abrogated its role in amending trade legislation by granting the President Fast Track Negotiating Authority, which affords the Congress only the option of an up-and-down-vote. Furthermore, after being ruled constitutionally impermissible by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1997, there are still efforts in the U.S. Congress to endow the president with the line-item-veto, allowing him/her to veto specific provisions of a bill without vetoing the entire legislation.

With respect to veto power, George Washington only vetoed legislation he truly believed was unconstitutional. He did not veto legislation that he viewed as injudicious. In a radical departure from that precedent, Andrew Jackson vetoed legislation out of disagreement, most notably, an act to charter the National Bank. Jackson vetoed twelve pieces of legislation during his eight years as president. His seven predecessors had vetoed only nine bills combined. Today, the veto is considered an arrow in the president’s quiver to scupper legislation unpalatable to him. Grover Cleveland vetoed 414 pieces of legislation in his first term. Gerald R. Ford earned the nickname: “Mr. Veto” by vetoing 66 pieces of legislation given to him by the Democratic Congress in his 895 days in office.

Similarly, the U.S. Constitution does not stipulate that the president must even appear before the U.S. Congress to deliver his State of the Union Address. It only dictates: “He 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.” George Washington and John Adams delivered their addresses in person. However, Thomas Jefferson halted this practice, believing it was too monarchical. In 1913, in an effort to bring about “a closer intimacy between the Congress and the executive,” Woodrow Wilson delivered the address in person. Today, the political theater of a presidential State of the Union Address is standard.

We now expect to see the president barnstorming the nation promoting his legislative agenda. This was not inherent in the presidency as formulated by the founders. George Washington delivered only 25 public speeches during his two terms in office. Thomas Jefferson gave just three public speeches, and James Madison did not deliver a solitary public speech.

Andrew Johnson played a large role in making presidential speeches a part of the presidential itinerary when in 1866 he embarked on a 19-day train trip, speaking in ten states about his plan for Reconstruction following the Civil War. Theodore Roosevelt took presidential public speaking a step further, using “the bully pulpit” by touring parts of the nation, urging Americans to tell their members of Congress to support the Hepburn Act, regulating the nation’s railroads.

Maybe this is because we desire simplicity. We see the president as the nation’s visionary and our members of Congress as the ones who help us when we do not get our Social Security Checks on time, or when applying for federal funding for a new wing at the local Community College.

Alternatively, some of our presidents are apotheosized. Four in fact are enshrined in granite at Mount Rushmore. Their heads appear on our money, and there is even a federal holiday in their honor. They even have Presidential libraries and museums immortalizing their lives.

It may be prudent to re-examine the admonitions of Edmond Randolph and Patrick Henry, or to listen to William Howard Taft, one of the last presidents who understood the limits of the presidency: “… The president can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power or justly implied and included within such express grant as proper and necessary to its exercise. Such specific grant must be either in the federal Constitution or in an act of Congress passed in pursuance thereof.”

The presidency has grown well beyond its constitutional strictures. Its expansion and powers continue to increase, sometimes quickly, sometimes imperceptibly. The office has become what critics at the Constitutional Convention admonished it would become. It resembles a monarchy.

Easter is upon us, a time when Christians celebrate their belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. In the political sphere, there are also resurrections. Politicians sometimes peak early in their career and then fall into the political abyss. Some then miraculously rise again.

In 1824, at age 29, Democrat James K. Polk was elected to the United States House of Representatives. In 1835 he was elected Speaker of the House. In 1839 Polk was elected governor of his native Tennessee. However, with the proliferation of the Whig Party in the state, Polk lost his bid for re-election in 1841. In 1843 Polk sought the governorship once again but lost. Having been summarily rejected twice by voters in his own state, it appeared that Polk was a middle-aged politician with a great career behind him.

Undeterred by these past defeats, Polk attended the Democratic National Convention in 1844 hoping that his party would remember his many contributions as Speaker of the House and award him with the vice presidential nomination. As luck would have it, the Convention became deadlocked, and on the eighth ballot the Convention chose Polk as a compromise candidate. Miraculously, Polk went on to win the general election. Oddly, the man who could not maintain the governorship of his home state of Tennessee rose from defeat to win the presidency.

Richard M. Nixon was once a rising star in California politics. In 1946, the 33-year-old former Navy Lieutenant Commander defeated a 10-year House incumbent Jerry Voorhees. As a freshman House member, Nixon rose to national prominence for his role as a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee as the committee investigated whether Alger Hiss, a State Department official, was a Communist. In 1948, Nixon won both the Democratic and Republican Parties’ nomination for re-election. Ironically, he was running against himself.

In 1950, Nixon was elected to the U.S. Senate, and just two years later he was elected vice president. Nixon served eight years as vice president. In 1960, Nixon won the Republican Party nomination, but failed to secure the presidency in a close election that some still believe he won. Two years later, Nixon made the politically dicey decision to run for governor of California against the popular incumbent Pat Brown. Nixon lost the race by over 300,000 votes. This loss caused many political observers to conclude that Nixon’s political carrier was behind him. The defeated Nixon told the members of the press: “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.”

However, reports of Nixon’s political demise were premature. Nixon spent much of 1964 and 1966 barnstorming the nation, collecting chits by campaigning for Republican candidates. By 1968, Nixon had re-secured his political standing and won the GOP nomination. Nixon went on to win the presidency, capping an implausible political comeback that many characterized as nothing short of a miraculous political resurrection.

In 1974, a young state legislator named Michael Dukakis defeated Republican Governor Frank Sargent of Massachusetts. Dukakis ran a brilliant campaign by running to the right of liberal Republican Sargent.

However, Governor Dukakis tried to balance the state’s budget through “root-canal” economics. He cut social services, alienating his party’s liberal base. He then broke his promise not to raise taxes, disenchanting moderates who had voted for him thinking he was more conservative than the Republican Frank Sargent. These actions led to Dukakis losing his own party’s nomination for re-election. Massachusetts Democrats selected conservative Democrat Ed King as their nominee instead of Dukakis.

Dukakis did not go quietly into the night. While in exile, he taught at the Kennedy School of Government. Dukakis came back to defeat King in 1982 by exploiting King’s conservative record by highlighting the praise King had received from the Reagan administration. Dukakis then went on to defeat a formidable Republican opponent (former Boston City Councilor John W. Sears in the General Election. Dukakis was re-elected in 1986 with 69 percent of the vote, and quite miraculously just two years later rose to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.

In 1978, a 32-year-old political dynamo named Bill Clinton was elected Governor of Arkansas. Clinton was a political wonderkid, a superlative retail politician with seemingly boundless oratorical prowess. However, Governor Clinton lost political support when he signed into law an unpopular increase in license plate fees. In addition, President Jimmy Carter, a close ally of Clinton, had federalized Fort Chaffee in Arkansas, sending Cuban refugees there for processing. As a result, the “boy governor” became the youngest “ex-governor” in American history.

Like Dukakis, Clinton did not exit the political stage. Instead, he learned from his defeat and rose again. Clinton barnstormed the state, asking voters why they rejected him. Clinton won his old job back by taking the unusual step of appearing in a television advertisement in which he apologized for raising the license plate fees. He said: “You can’t learn without listening.” Miraculously, the voters accepted Clinton’s apology, and he went on to be re-elected governor three more times, and was elected president in 1992.

This brings us to the current president. Barack Obama was elected to the State Senate in 1996. Obama then managed to forge a close relationship with the powerful State Senator Emil Jones Jr. His political star was now on the rise. He became a prominent voice on issues involving campaign finance reform, social justice, and welfare reform. In 2000, Obama gambled his political fortune by challenging U.S. Representative Bobby Rush in his bid for re-election. However, Obama’s message of bipartisanship and unity did not resonate in the heavily Democratic South Chicago-based Congressional district. Rush succeeded in casting Obama as a resident of the elite Hyde Park section of the district, and as such, out of touch with the needs of the district. Rush mocked Obama’s “Eastern elite degrees.” The result was an electoral shellacking. Rush trounced Obama by 31 percentage points.

Obama remained in the State Senate, until 2004. His political resurrection began in 2004 when he ran for the U.S. Senate and won. Somewhat miraculously Obama then won the Democratic nomination for president and subsequently won the presidency, completing a phenomenal political resurrection.

In the world of politics, resurrections and miracles apparently never cease.

Mark Twain said that “history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” He could very well have been talking about the revival of support for a non-interventionist foreign policy within the GOP. U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has become a prominent voice within the Republican Party in support of non-intervention. He does not espouse the bellicose rhetoric normally associated with the GOP. Instead, he advocates for reductions in military expenditures, liquidating the overseas American empire, and is averse to entering into foreign entanglements. His recent filibuster, questioning the Obama administration’s ambitious use of predator drones, was surprisingly met with support from many in the Republican Party.

A less ambitious foreign policy was not long ago considered anathema to the Republican Party. In 2004, U.S. Senator Zell Miller (D-GA: a conservative Democrat who endorsed Republican President George W. Bush) whooped up the Republican National Convention by lambasting Democratic nominee John Kerry for being weak on defense. The crowd hollered uproariously when Miller exclaimed: “This the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces? U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs?”

During the 2008 Republican Presidential primary campaign, U.S. Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), the father of Rand Paul, was booed for suggesting that U.S. foreign policy effectuates enmity toward the U.S around the world, and that blowback from it was manifested in the 9/11 hijackings. This was branded a fringe position within the GOP and there was a movement to exclude Ron Paul from future debates.

What a difference five years makes. Today, with a majority of Americans believing it was a mistake for the U.S. to invade Iraq, and with little appetitive for a continued U.S. presence in Afghanistan, the non-interventionism of the Ron and Rand Paul is proliferating in popularity within the GOP. There is little political incentive for Republicans to bang the war drums.

Non-intervention is not a new concept in the Republican Party. In 1920, America was exhausted from WW1 and the ambitious interventionist agenda of Woodrow Wilson. Wilson had invaded the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, and Nicaragua. Republican Warren G. Harding won a landslide victory by calling for a “return to normalcy.” Harding espoused the doctrine of non-interventionism, exclaiming: “America should be a party to no permanent military alliance. It can enter into no political commitments, nor assume any economic obligations which will subject our decisions to any other than our own authority.”

With a respite during WWII, the Republican Party was the party of non-intervention and peace for a generation. Harding’s Republican successor, Calvin Coolidge was a signatory to the Kellogg-Briand Pact that renounced war “as an instrument of national Policy.” His Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg won a Noble Peace Prize for his role in writing the treaty. Herbert Hoover instituted the Good Neighbor Policy of non-intervention in the internal affairs of Latin America, and subsequently withdrew U.S. forces from Nicaragua. In 1940 the Republican Party’s platform stated: “The Republican Party is firmly opposed to involving this Nation in foreign war.”

After WWII, U.S. Senator Robert A. Taft (R-OH) became the public face of the Republican Party. Nicknamed: “Mr. Republican,” Taft was a steadfast non-interventionist and an opponent of the military draft. He also opposed the U.S. entry into NATO for fear that it would antagonize relations with the Soviet Union and he also opposed U.S. involvement in the Korean War.

In 1952, Taft lost the Republican Presidential nomination to Dwight D. Eisenhower, who did not share Taft’s non-interventionist proclivities. Eisenhower supported U.S. intervention with the specific intent of staunching communist influence. This became the Republican Party doctrine throughout the entire Cold War. However, Eisenhower grew fearful of the proliferation of U.S. military power, warning in his farewell address of the “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” In addition, he advised his successor, John F. Kennedy, to begin withdrawing U.S. forces from Europe, warning, “America is carrying far more than her share of the free world defense.”

Once the Cold War ended, some Cold War hawks like 1992 and 1996 Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, urged the party to return to it’s non-interventionist roots. However, they were met with opposition from neoconservatives within the Republican Party. This new force in the Republican Party included many former Democrats who became disillusioned with the non-interventionist vein in their own party during in the 1970s. They supported an activist role for the U.S. as the sole remaining superpower. They urged that the U.S. franchise its liberal democratic principles throughout the globe. Many supported the ultra hawk U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) in his 2000 Presidential bid against Texas Governor George W. Bush who advocated “a more humble foreign policy.”

Bush pursued a less ambitious foreign policy agenda in the first nine months of his administration. However, after the 9/11 hijackings, Bush became a born-again neoconservative, adopting their agenda of “regime change in Iraq.” Bush became an ideological crusader for the expansion of democracy, and idealistically called for the U.S. to work toward “Ending tyranny in our world.”

With the Cold War over, and Bush no longer the public face of the Republican Party, and with a war-weary public, non-interventionism is once again becoming a formidable force in the GOP. Rand Paul is striking a resonant chord with some fiscal conservatives in the Republican Party who question why the U.S. continues to spend more on defense than the next 10 countries combined and who question the prudence of expanding its military tentacles around the world with no apparent exit plan.

Non-interventionism is no longer a fringe position within the Republican Party. It may in fact become what it was for a generation prior to the Cold War: mainstream thinking in the Republican Party. Rand Paul is marking his territory as the chief advocate of non-intervention in the GOP. In a time when views on foreign policies are shifting within the Republican Party, Rand Paul may find himself in the right place at the right time to hit political pay dirt.

The terms RINO (Republican in Name Only) and DINO (Democrat in Name Only) are used pejoratively by adherents of contemporary partisan orthodoxy to describe ideological outliers. Partisans often question why moderate and liberal Republicans and moderate and conservative Democrats identify with their respective parties. It is quite ironic that these political positions have come to be ideological outliers. Based on the founding of both parties, the original ideological outliers were Conservative Republicans and Liberal Democrats.

The Democratic Party we know today evolved from the Democratic-Republican Party of the 1790’s. The first contested Presidential election was in 1796. The Democratic-Republican Party nominated the conservative Thomas Jefferson as their first presidential nominee. Party members were anti-federalists who favored state sovereignty, free markets, a decentralized federal government, and an originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution and the attendant Bill of Rights. The Democratic-Republican Party also supported the institution of slavery. Although difficult to fathom today, what we now know as the Democratic Party was the nation’s major conservative party throughout the nineteenth century.

Democrat Martin Van Buren presided over the panic of 1837, and during that time he was steadfastly opposed to using the government as a means of employing workers on public works projects. In fact, during this economic depression Van Buren literally sold the federal government’s tool supply so that the government could not use the tools for public works projects. This ideological mindset is diametrically opposite to the economic stimulus that contemporary Democrats now support and advocate for, especially during periods of economic morass.

The Republican Party has also been through significant ideological alterations. The GOP was founded in opposition to the expansion of slavery, supported railroad construction, supported more money for public education, a more liberal immigration policy, and agreed with the sale of unoccupied land to Homesteaders. At the time, the Republican Party was seen as the progressive alternative to the conservative Democratic Party of Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. For much of the latter-half of the nineteenth century the GOP continued to be the liberal party.

This is especially evidenced by the 1888 Presidential election where Republican Benjamin Harrison was elected President by advocating a liberal platform. He favored expanding the money supply, expanding the protective tariff, and munificent funding for social services. Harrison lost his re-election bid in 1892 to Democrat Grover Cleveland, who advocated a conservative platform, including maintaining the gold standard, reducing the protective tariff, and supporting a lassie faire approach to government intervention in the economy.

In 1896, the country was mired in another depression, and there was a move afoot in the Democratic Party to abandon conservative orthodoxy of Van Buren and Cleveland, and to undertake a new ideological approach. To the chagrin of the Democratic high-command, the party took a leap of faith when it nominated the 36-year-old firebrand populist William Jennings Bryan. Nicknamed “The Great Commoner,” Bryan advocated a liberal platform. He opposed the gold standard, advocated an interventionist role for the government in the economy, and supported an expansion of the money supply. He was the first liberal to win the Democratic Party Presidential nomination since the party began. This represented a radical departure from the conservative roots of the Democratic Party.

The nomination of the Liberal Bryan inflamed the conservative establishment of the Democratic Party. In fact, Democrat President Cleveland refused to support Bryan, choosing instead to support the quixotic Third Party Candidate, John M. Palmer of the Pro-Gold Standard National Democratic Party.

In response, the Republican Party countered by straying away from its liberal beginnings and nominating the moderate-conservative Ohio Governor William McKinley, who, like Harrison, was a proponent of a strong protective tariff, but who, unlike Harrison, favored the Gold Standard. This incensed many old-line progressive Republicans. Some even defected to the Democratic Party to support Bryan. McKinley won handily and was re-elected in a rematch with Bryan in 1900.

The paradigm of the Democrats being the center-right party and the Republicans being the center-left party remained for much of the nineteenth century. The Bryan nomination ushered in a period of ideological bifurcation within the two major parties, resulting in an era where both parties had a liberal and a conservative bloodline.

Liberals and conservatives had a long cohabitation in both parties. In the South, for much of the twentieth century, the Republican Party was near dormant. Winning the Democratic nomination in the South was tantamount to winning the election. Yet most Democrats who were elected to office in the South were conservatives. Much of the opposition to the New Deal and the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson derived from what came to be known as “the conservative coalition” consisting of conservative (mostly southern) Democrats and Western Republicans.

Two of the most conservative members of the U.S. Senate were Democrats James Eastland and John Stennis of Mississippi. In 1972, Democratic Alabama Governor George Wallace, who railed against “pointy headed intellectuals,” welfare, and big Government, won six Democratic Presidential primaries including Florida where he won all 67 of the sunshine state’s counties before being shot at a political rally.

Liberal Republicans were once a respected part of the Republican establishment. For example, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller increased welfare spending and raised taxes to pay for it. He was the party establishment’s favorite for the GOP Presidential nomination in 1964. However, he lost to conservative insurgent Barry Goldwater. As recently as 1976, Ronald Reagan announced that if he garnered the Presidential nomination, he would select U.S. Senator Richard Schweiker (R-PA), a moderate, as his running mate. Schweiker scored a 90% positive rating from Americans For Democratic Action. Reagan lost that race to the moderate Gerald R. Ford. On the state level, Massachusetts elected liberal Republican Governors Christian Herter, John A. Volpe, and Frank Sergeant, and elected liberal Republicans Leveret Saltonstall and Edwin Brook to the U.S. Senate.

Today, there is a perceived ideological homogeneity regarding the two major parties. Democrats must be liberals and Republican must be conservatives. But this is a recent phenomenon. The few remaining Conservative Democrats and Liberal Republicans are ostracized. And giving the demeaning monikers of “RINO’s” and “DINOs.” This is not based on history but on a contemporaneous view of the two parties. The founders of both parties would not recognize the modern incarnations of their two parties. In both cases the opposite ideology now commandeers the political platform of their party. RINO’s and DINO’s have evolved into the ideological outliers, fully supplanting the Conservative Democrats and the Liberal Republicans of the past two centuries.

Chuck Hagel was recently confirmed by the Democratically-controlled U.S. Senate to be the 24th U.S. Secretary of Defense. He accomplished this with only four Republican votes in the U.S. Senate. It is no secret that Hagel has become persona non-grata among many of his former Republican Senate colleagues. However, it was not simply his opposition to the Iraq War which led to this situation, but his outspokenness on the issue.

Hagel was once a loyal Republican foot soldier. In fact, he was on the shortlist as a possible running mate for Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush in 2000. Hagel was in lock step with contemporary conservatism. He supported the Bush tax cuts, opposed abortion rights, and opposed adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare.

Hagel’s cordial relationship with the Republican Party changed dramatically when he expressed his opposition and indignation to the Bush administration and Congressional Republicans who advocated a troop surge in Iraq. Hagel rated the Bush administration and its foreign policy as being “the lowest in capacity, in capability, in policy, [and] in consensus. Furthermore, he accused the Bush administration of “playing ping pong with American lives.”

Both the Democratic and Republican parties will tolerate ideological outliers and mavericks, but only if they represent hostile terrain for their parties. For example, the Republican establishment went full throttle in supporting U.S. Senator Lincoln Chafee in his 2006 re-election bid despite the fact that Chafee was probably the most liberal Republican in the U.S. Congress. In fact, he was the only Republican in the U.S. Senate to vote against the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. Furthermore, Chafee opposed the Bush tax cuts and supported gay marriage. When he was asked if he would support George W. Bush for re-election, Chaffee stoically stated that he would probably write in another candidate.

Chaffee had a voting record well to the left of Hagel, but he tended to only express frustration with the Republican Party and the Bush administration when asked, and he did so politely. Perhaps more importantly, Chaffee represented a state where Republicans constitute less than 10 percent of registered voters. The GOP high command was realistic enough to understand that Chafee “had” to distance himself from them in the interest of his political survival. Although Chafee finally lost his seat to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, he had campaign help from U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and support from members of the GOP establishment.

Similarly, the Democratic Party provides much leeway for independence in their ranks. For example, Blue Dog Democrats who represent conservative Congressional Districts are given wide latitude to exhibit independence from their party. In the 2012 Presidential election, Democrat Jim Matheson of Utah received the full blessing of the Democratic Party despite mailing out a flyer to his constituents with a picture of Mitt Romney reading: “Which Candidate Supports Mitt Romney’s Agenda.” In the flyer, Matheson highlighted his points of agreement with the GOP Presidential nominee. Matheson went on to win re-election in a district where Romney mustered 67 percent of the vote. Matheson did not publicly excoriate the Democratic Party, but he did all that he could to distance himself from his party.

Gene Taylor, a Blue Dog Democrat from Mississippi, had one of the most conservative records of any Democrat in Congress. In fact, he was the only Democrat to vote for all four articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton in 1998. He also refused to vote for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, thus inoculating himself from criticism for supporting a “San Francisco Liberal.” However, in 2009, grateful to Pelosi for her promise to him to support catastrophic insurance coverage in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Taylor supported Pelosi for Speaker. His Republican opponent, Steven Palazzo, made this vote for Pelosi a flagship criticism of Taylor and subsequently defeated him. Ironically, the Democratic establishment remained quiet as Taylor underscored the votes he cast against his Democratic leadership, and there was no uproar when he even said he would vote for Republican Presidential nominee John McCain.

Like the Republicans with Hagel, many Democrats do not give a pass to Joe Lieberman. Lieberman comes from Connecticut, a center-left state where Democrats do not suffer electoral recriminations for toeing the party line. Lieberman supported the war in Iraq from the beginning, and remained an advocate of the war effort while many Democrats became critics of the war. In 2006, after loosing the Democratic Party nomination for re-election, Lieberman won as an Independent, but continued to caucus with the Democrats.

Lieberman passes the ideological litmus test for Democrats on many issues. He supports abortion rights, gun control, and takes an aggressive stance on combating climate change. Yet Lieberman was a vociferous supporter of the Bush administration in the Iraq War and its bellicose foreign policy. In addition, Lieberman supported Republican John McCain for president in 2008. Lieberman even spoke at the Republican National Convention and excoriated Barack Obama for “voting to cut off funding for our troops on the ground” and said that, as a Senator, Obama had not “reached across party lines to accomplish anything significant.”

The result is that, like Hagel, Lieberman is a pariah in the Democratic caucus. As a result of his actions, the Democratic Senate Caucus voted to oust him from the chairmanship of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

As parties use every means possible at their disposal to obtain and solidify a numerical majority, they accept the realization that members of Congress with constituencies that may be hostile to their party’s legislative agenda must display independence. For the sake of sustainability, they rarely receive recriminations from their respective parties, and are in fact embraced by their parties so long as they are not outspoken in excoriating their parties. However, when members of Congress, like Hagel and Lieberman, who have no political incentive to speak out against the policies of their parties, but do so, and do so with great indignation, they become persona non-grata in the inter sanctum of their respective parties.

Former U.S. Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) stunned the American political scene by announcing that he would not run in the special election to succeed John Kerry, who resigned his U.S. Senate seat to become Secretary of State. Brown was a rare Republican who was able to win a seat in heavily Democratic Massachusetts. He struck lighting in a political bottle, winning a special election against a feckless and gaffe-prone Democratic opponent.

In 2012, as the political universe reestablished its natural equilibrium, Brown lost his reelection bid. While the moderate Republican remains personally popular in Massachusetts, Brown could not overcome the argument that a vote for Brown was a vote to keep the unpopular Republican Party in control of the U.S. Senate. Brown’s Democratic opponent, Elizabeth Warren, ran as much against Brown as she ran against a potential Republican take-over of the U.S. Senate. In a debate, Warren admonished that a Republican-controlled U.S. Senate would mean that conservative “Jim Inhofe [U.S. Senator from Oklahoma] would become the person who would be in charge of the committee that oversees the Environmental Protection Agency. He’s a man that has called global warming a hoax.”

It has become increasingly hard for moderate Republicans to be elected to the U.S. Senate in Democratic states. Correspondingly, it is also increasingly difficult for moderate Democrats to be elected in Republican states. This is due primarily to the fact that control of the U.S. Senate could hang in the balance.

Brown would be better off politically to seek the Massachusetts governorship in 2014. In many ways, the Republican label can actually be an asset to a republican candidate running for governor in Massachusetts. Ronald Reagan was the only Republican to carry the Bay State in a presidential election since 1956, yet the state had all Republican governors from 1991-2007. During that same time period, only two Republicans were elected to serve in the Massachusetts Congressional delegation, and both Republicans were extremely fortunate to be running against an incumbent Democrat inveleped in scandal. Both Republicans were defeated after only two terms in Congress.

Republicans have employed a winning political formula at the gubernatorial level in Massachusetts by running as moderates who if elected would act as a check on the overwhelmingly Democratic state legislature. They won with the support of Republicans, Independents and even some Democrats who would vote a split ticket between a Republican governor and a Democratic candidate for the state legislature. In 2002, Republican Mitt Romney won the Massachusetts governorship by campaigning against one-party rule. He would hit the hustings with large posters of House Speaker Tom Finneran and the expected-to-be-Senate-President Robert Travaglini, as well as Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Shannon O’Brien. Romney warned that the three Democrats would constitute a “single-party monopoly.” For her part, O’Brien was unable to justify why one political party should control all the levers of power in the Bay State.

Massachusetts is not the only Democratic state to be hospitable to Republican gubernatorial nominees. Rhode Island had all Republican governors from 1995-2011, despite having a Republican registration in the state of only about 10 percent. The same formula employed by Massachusetts Republicans in capturing the governorship works in Rhode Island as well.

On the contrary, the three most Republican states in the nation have elected many Democratic governors. Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming have voted for a Democratic presidential nominee only once since 1952 (Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1964 landslide). Each of these states has supermajorities in their Legislatures, and outside of the governorship, the state Democratic Party is near dormant. Yet they have a record of electing Democratic governors. Utah had only Democratic governors from 1965-1985. The longest serving governor in Idaho history is Democrat Cecil Dale Andrus, who served from 1971-1977 and from 1987-1995. Wyoming had Democratic governors for all but eight years during the time-period of 1975-2011. Democrat David Freudenthal was reelected in 2006 with a staggering 70 percent of the vote.

In these aforementioned cases, the gubernatorial candidates presented themselves as the only counterweight to a single party holding a monopoly on the levers of power.

Ironically, most of these minority-party governors have been rewarded with stratospheric job approval ratings. However, they tend to run into trouble when they venture into national politics. For example, Republican William Weld was reelected as governor of Massachusetts in 1994 with 71 percent of the vote in a state where less than 15 percent of voters were registered Republicans. However, when he ran for the U.S. Senate just two years later, Democrat John Kerry handily defeated Weld. Kerry ran as much against the popular Weld as he did against the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress. Voters liked Weld as governor precisely because he acted as a check on the Democratic state legislature. However, they would not elect a Republican to the U.S. Senate, as that would be aiding and abetting the unpopular Republican Congress.

Alternatively, Democrat Tony Knowles served two terms as Alaska governor, a state that has voted for the Republican Presidential nominee only once since its entrance into the Union. He was reelected in 1998 by over 30 points, yet lost a race for the U.S. Senate in 2004. In the case of both Weld and Knowles, voters were saying “Nothing personal: It’s just business.”

No matter how moderate his voting record, if Brown were to run again for the U.S. Senate, he would be acutely vulnerable. The Democrats would recruit a formidable nominee who would run not so much against Brown, but against Republican control of the U.S. Senate. As a U.S. Senate candidate, Brown is in a no-win situation. By contrast, as a candidate for governor of Massachusetts, Brown has the upper-hand politically. He can put the Democratic nominee on the defensive by asking why one party should control all of the levers of power. Only the most doctrinaire Democrats would want one party to have that much power in the state.

It is ironic that Democrats in Republican states, and Republicans in Democratic states, are actually at an advantage when it comes to the governorship. Absent the baggage of Congressional Republicans, Scott Brown, with a personal approval rating of near 60 percent, could be a serious prospect for the Democrats to have to contend with.

“Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, distinguished guests, my fellow Americans.”

These words, or a slight variation of them, are spoken by the president to begin the annual State of The Union address. Today the annual State of the Union address is usually more political theater than substance. The House Sergeant-at-Arms bellows: “Mr. Speaker! The President of the United States!” The president subsequently enters the House Chamber and slowly walks to the podium, shaking hands with members of Congress. Some arrive at the Chamber hours before the address to stand in the center aisles to be seen greeting the president on national television.

There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution mandating that the president even deliver the address in person. Article ll, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution only dictates: “He 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.”

In 1790, George Washington began the practice of delivering the address in person. His first address was just 833 words. By contrast, Harry S. Truman’s 1946 address was more than 25,000 words.

Washington’s successor, John Adams, followed suit in delivering the address in person. Thomas Jefferson, an anti-federalist who believed in a limited presidency, believed that delivering the speech was monarchical. Accordingly, he jettisoned the practice of personally appearing before Congress and submitted his report in writing. This precedent continued through succeeding presidencies until 1913.

Woodrow Wilson, in an effort to bring the presidency closer to the people, delivered his address in person in 1913. Wilson’s Secretary, Joseph P. Tumulty, said the new president wanted to bring about “a closer intimacy between the Congress and the executive.” Wilson continued this annual practice, shifting the address from a written statement of the work of the executive branch of government to a personal plea for the Congress to support his legislative program.

President Warren G. Harding also personally delivered the address, as did his successor, Calvin Coolidge. However, Coolidge delivered just his first address in person. Herbert Hoover, succeeding Coolidge, did not deliver the address in person.

The practice of delivering the State of The Union address in person was revived by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934, and has been an expected practice ever since. Roosevelt was also the first president to use the term “State of the Union” in his address. The original term for the oration was “The President’s Annual Message to Congress.” It has only been officially referred to as the “State of The Union address” since 1947.

During the address, the leaders of both chambers of Congress (the Speaker of the House, and the vice president in his capacity as the president of the U.S. Senate) sit behind the president. The Speaker of the House officially introduces the president.

The optics of this event can also make an impression on the American psyche. When Lyndon B. Johnson succeeded to the presidency upon the death of John F. Kennedy, there was no provision in the U.S. Constitution for the president to nominate a new vice president. The Senate president pro tempore filled the chair reserved for the vice president. The incumbent in this position would sit behind the president. Americans saw 73-year-old House Speaker John McCormack and 87-year-old Senate President Pro Tempore Carl Hayden seated behind President Johnson as he delivered his 1964 State of the Union address. Millions of Americans saw that these two elderly men were next in line for the presidency. This visual provided a groundswell of support for the passage of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, allowing the president to nominate a new vice president in the case of a vacancy.

Prior to 1966, the State of the Union address was actually delivered during the day. Johnson broke this precedent in an effort to maximize television viewership. This was also the first time that the major opposition party delivered a rebuttal following the address. The opposing party often puts up its congressional leaders to deliver a rebuttal. This was the case in 1966, when U.S. Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen (R-IL) and U.S. House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford (R-MI) delivered the official response to the President’s State of the Union address.

Sometimes the parties use this opportunity to showcase rising stars who wield little national name recognition. In 1985, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton and Florida Governor Bob Gramm delivered the rebuttal. Both were thought of as potential presidential contenders.

In 1997, the Republicans offered second-term U.S. Representative J.C. Watts this platform. In 2010, newly elected Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell performed the honors.

With the advent of the teleprompter, the president can now talk directly to the audience without having to refer to notes at the podium. Every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has delivered the address with the aid of this electronic device except for Richard M. Nixon who preferred to use note cards. In 1994, the wrong speech was placed into the teleprompter, forcing Bill Clinton to begin the address from memory until the problem was ameliorated.

Richard M. Nixon delivered his 1974 State of the Union address as the nation was in the crux of the Watergate scandal, which would bring his administration down later that same year. Confronting the scandal, Nixon declared: “One year of Watergate is enough.” In that address, Nixon also proposed a comprehensive health insurance plan that was eerily similar to the one signed by President Obama in 2010. The program would mandate all Americans to have health insurance, with the federal government subsidizing those who could not afford it. Nixon said in his 1974 State of the Union address: “The time is at hand to bring comprehensive, high quality health care within the reach of every American.” However, the Democratic Congress, supporting a single-payer non-for-profit health care system, did not move on Nixon’s plan, arguing that it would be a boon to the insurance companies.

The next year, Nixon’s successor, Gerald R. Ford, delivered a dour State of the Union address. It was a time of increasing unemployment and inflation. Ford declared that the nation had become “self-indulgent” and that, “the state of our country is not good.”

As the president leaves the Chamber podium he shakes hands and signs autographs for members of Congress from both sides of the aisle. Members of Congress jockey to shake the president’s hand. Some members use the occasion to lobby for presidential attention for their congressional districts. For example, at the 2012 State of The Union address, U.S. Representative Shelia Jackson Lee (D-TX) invited President Barack Obama to visit the M.D. Anderson Medical Center located in her congressional district.

The day following the State of the Union address, both supporters and opponents of the President engage in political combat regarding the president’s remarks. To members of the president’s party the address is always brilliant, inspiring oratory. To members of the opposing party, the speech is partisan rhetoric unworthy of the president’s esteemed office. However, the job approval ratings of the president usually gets a decent bump from all of the free airtime he receives prior to, during, and subsequent to delivering his address to a national audience in the majestic historic House Chamber.