The State of the State and State of the Union addresses have become colossal wastes of time in the public calendar.
Neither Gov. Pat Quinn nor President Barack Obama offered any specific action steps for how to attain their objectives in speeches given this week. Both speeches sounded like campaign rhetoric. Quinn is running for re-election, and Obama hopes to get out the vote for Democratic representatives and senators this fall.
We don't mean to pick on Quinn and Obama. These types of speeches have been notably predictable for years, tending to sound like the self-appraisal portion a job performance review - "I've done a great job and here's why."
Of course, there's no shortage of opinion about these speeches, and predictably, those opinions fall along party lines. Neither the speeches nor the responses from the opposition serve any purpose, especially in an era in which the partisan divide has never been wider.
We're thankful that Quinn's speech lasted only about 40 minutes and was delivered at noon so it was easy to tune out. Obama, however, was all over prime time TV and talked so long that some newspapers missed deadlines.
The presidential speech has become a made-for-TV event that reinforces the president as celebrity more than it does provide a serious forum for our head of state. It wasn't always so.
George Washington and John Adams delivered state of the union messages to Congress, but from Thomas Jefferson to Woodrow Wilson, presidents sent written reports on the condition of the nation and their legislative agendas to Congress. Wilson resumed the Washington-Adams practice of addressing Congress in 1913.
In 1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first president to use the term "state of the union." State of the Union had become generally accepted as the name of the address by 1947.
Technology changed how the message was delivered. In 1923, Calvin Coolidge's speech was the first to be broadcast on radio. In 1947, Harry S. Truman's was the first on TV. In 1997, Bill Clinton's was the first broadcast live on the Internet.
Today we have Twitter, Facebook and other social media to spread the message and compile the responses. Perhaps one day the president's message will go through social media without a corresponding TV show.
We wouldn't mind seeing a return to the written reports. Watching TV is a passive, mindless activity where the message is controlled by the images you see.
It takes a greater level of mental activity to read, digest and understand information presented in written form. It would be a better use of the public's time to use its brains more and its butts less.