Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Max Ask any White House speechwriter what they think about the State of the Union address and you’ll get the same answer back: It sucks. “Very few, if any, go down in history, let’s put it that way,” said TERRY SZUPLAT, BARACK OBAMA’s senior director of speechwriting at the National Security Council. But on Tuesday when JOE BIDEN delivers his first State of the Union speech, it could prove to be the exception to a worn out Washington truism. “People often say a State of the Union is just a laundry list,” DAVID LITT, one of Obama’s key second term speechwriters, told West Wing Playbook. “It’s not this year because there's serious stuff going on.” There’s rarely been a time in modern history when a State of the Union address has happened in a news vacuum, and there have been many highly-anticipated addresses. RICHARD NIXON gave his last SOTU speech under the worsening cloud of the Watergate scandal, and during the next address, his successor GERALD FORD bluntly declared that the state of the union was pretty bad. In 1999, President BILL CLINTON walked out to give his speech just weeks after being impeached for lying about his affair with White House intern MONICA LEWINSKY. But the shocking and bloody Russian invasion of Ukraine has presented an urgency for the SOTU speech unlike any in recent memory. The conflict represents the biggest foreign policy crisis in Europe in years, if not decades, and has added extra scrutiny to Biden’s every comment. Szuplat, who helped Obama’s head speechwriters CODY KEENAN and JON FAVREAU on several addresses, argued that although the president has a long list of items to address including inflation, energy prices, and the Covid-19 pandemic, his biggest challenge is to explain why Ukraine matters for America. “That’s probably the challenge I suspect the president and his speechwriters are going through in recent days,” he said. “To show how and why what’s happening in Ukraine is connected to the larger economic and political challenges that we’re facing in the world.” The invasion of Ukraine upended a speech that was already weeks in the making. Biden and his team have spent hours revising a speech that was originally supposed to focus on the country’s economic gains and challenges. As of yesterday, it still wasn’t done. While it’s likely that viewership for this year’s address could be higher than expected (the Ukraine crisis has briefly returned cable ratings to their Trump-era levels), there are obvious reasons why the State of the Union normally lands with a thud. Szuplat said he had some incredible moments working on past speeches. But he also noted that the formulaic nature of the address made it a challenge to speechwriters every year, no matter the administration. “Every president, every speechwriter laments having to go through this process,” he said. “If there were an easy way to do it differently, to do it better, it would've been years ago. The venue is locked, the format is locked, so it lacks the spontaneity, it lacks so much of what makes great speeches great.” The world of presidential speechwriters is small, and the pool of Democratic former writers is even smaller. Many speechwriters from the previous three Democratic administrations keep in contact with one another and the current administration’s speechwriting team to share war stories. A few have privately offered general advice and kind words to Biden head speechwriter VINAY REDDY over the past year. And while few, if any, of them cite the State of the Union speech as their favorite, they recognize that the changing nature of media has the potential to make the speech more useful and relevant. Litt noted that Biden’s team is likely crafting an address that focuses more on moments that can be clipped and shared virally online, versus treating the speech as a massive political meal to be consumed all at once. “Fewer Americans than ever watch big speeches so the real test isn't just TV ratings but also how many clippable moments are in the speech that then get shared online,” Litt said. “You're also thinking what is the 90-second or even 20-second bit that someone's going to see because their uncle shares on Facebook and that makes a huge difference. That could mean the impact of the speech is greater now than five years ago.” TEXT US — Are you VINAY REDDY, Biden’s likely very tired speechwriter? Get some rest and then we want to hear from you (we’ll keep you anonymous). Or if you think we missed something in today’s edition, let us know and we may include it tomorrow. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com or you can text/Signal/Wickr Alex at 8183240098 or Max at 7143455427.
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