MY SAY: DID YOU KNOW THIS ABOUT THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS?
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2012/01/24/state-of-the-union-trivia-and-history
The identity of the first president to deliver a State of the Union address before Congress probably won’t surprise anyone—George Washington. But readers might be interested to learn that the first president to deliver a speech known as a “State of the Union address” was Franklin D. Roosevelt.
First State of the Union speech. Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution mandates that the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” So it’s no surprise that George Washington delivered the first such address, before a joint session of Congress in New York on January 8, 1790.
Shortest speech. Washington’s first State of the Union was the shortest (by word count), at 1,089 words.
Speech versus written message. Washington and his successor, John Adams, delivered their annual messages to Congress in person. Thomas Jefferson thought that a president lecturing Congress was too “kingly” (like the British “speech from the throne”) and so he opted for annual written messages instead of orally delivered ones. So did the next dozen presidents, until Woodrow Wilson restarted the tradition of orally delivered speeches. The notion of the State of the Union as a speech being the standard didn’t take hold until FDR, however. Over all, 78 out of 222 such annual messages have been delivered in person.
No message at all. Two presidents—William Henry Harrison (1841) and James Garfield (1881) didn’t live long enough to actually deliver an annual message of any sort.
Longest message. Outgoing President Jimmy Carter produced the longest annual message, at a ponderous 33,667 words. Thankfully it was a written, not oral message.
Longest spoken message, in words. Is anyone surprised to hear it’s Bill Clinton? His 1995 address weighed in at 9,190 words. But even that wasn’t the…
Longest spoken message, in minutes. Clinton’s 2000 State of the Union speech, at 1:28:49 was actually longer than the ’95 address (1:24:58), even if the text was shorter (at a mere 7,452 words only his third longest State of the Union).
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