How chilly a reception in the House chamber?

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON — Will it be especially tense in the House chamber when President Bush walks in on Tuesday night to deliver his State of the Union address?

And will Bush gain respect by putting on a brave face in front of a body he’s never had to confront before, a Congress under Democratic control?

A prolonged war, an unpopular president, his actions under investigation by a Congress in the hands of his foes — Rep. David Obey, D-Wisc., has been around Capitol Hill long enough to see it all before.

Obey, a 38-year House veteran who is now the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, recalled another wartime president facing an arduous time.

The Wisconsin Democrat was sitting in the House chamber on the night of Jan. 30, 1974, when President Richard Nixon, besieged by the Watergate investigation, walked in to deliver what would turn out to be his final State of the Union speech.

Some Democrats refuse to stand
“What I remember is that when Nixon walked in, about half the Democrats refused to stand,” Obey told me in an interview just off the House floor, a few yards from where Nixon spoke.

“I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is going to look terrible on television.’ Then I discovered the House members weren’t shown on television” and the TV network anchormen didn’t comment on the Democrats’ snub of the president.

Nixon was seven months away from being forced to resign. “It was intense,” Obey said.

“It was electric, it was emotional for some of us,” said Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., who was then a member of the House.

Nixon recalled in his memoirs that his wife and daughters had discussed before the address “whether there might even be an open demonstration of hostility” from angry Democrats. His approval rating in public opinion polls had sunk to 26 percent, compared to the Gallup Poll's current 34 percent for Bush.

AP file President Nixon, with his successor Gerald Ford behind him, delivers his State of the Union speech on Jan. 30, 1974. He resigned on Aug. 9, 1974.

Nixon biographer Stephen Ambrose recounts that when the president entered the chamber he was “in a fighting mood. The applause and cheers from a small, but vocal group of Republican loyalists reinforced his determination.”

Nixon's hoped-for legacy
When Nixon declared that peace with the Soviet Union and the rest of the world was “the chief legacy I hope to leave from the eight years of my presidency,” Republicans got on their feet to cheer. "Eight" was only a hope; he was to have only five-and-a-half years in his presidency.

In an extemporaneous finale to his speech, Nixon turned to what he referred to as “the so-called Watergate affair” and called for an end to the investigations of himself and his former asides: “One year of Watergate is enough.”

“Hisses and boos could be heard from the Democratic side of the chamber,” Ambrose reports. When Nixon ended his speech by saying he had no intention “of ever walking away from the job that the people elected me to do,” Ambrose says there were both “waves of approval” and “groans of dismay” in the chamber.

In recent years exaggerated cheering or booing of the president’s words in the chamber have become routine. The annual speeches “have increasingly seemed like football matches,” complained Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Oregon. 

Asked to forecast Bush’s reception by Congress on Tuesday night, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said “I hope it will be respectful; I think the State of the Union speeches in some recent years have become circuses at times, where each side jumps up at the mention of a particular priority. It comes off as a very partisan exercise, rather than a dignified ceremony in which the president reports to the nation.”

She added, “I’ve often thought it would be better if we did not sit with Republicans on one side and Democrats on the other side, which just worsens the partisan atmosphere.”

'Acting like children'
“I hope we won’t be acting like children as we have been in recent years where one side jumps up and the other sits down and then the other side jumps up. How pathetic that is,” said Lott.

Democrat Obey agreed with his Republican counterparts.

“I think the State of the Union message is one of the most over-rated things in the world,” he said. “I frankly don’t care what he says; I care what he does.”

The annual address, Obey says, “has been made what it is by television and by media advisors. It is essentially political propaganda with members of Congress serving as a bunch of jumping Jacks.”

Obey’s advice: “Get the folderol over with and get down to work.”

But no matter what Obey, Lott, Collins and Smith think, the televised theatricality of the speech has become a ritual that Washington pundits and the TV networks invest with significance.

MORE FROM POLITICS

Politics Section Front

McCain vows to fight for new direction Poll: Obama up by 10 points NYT: Who's behind Obama whispers? How McCain, Obama will change abortion policy Johnston speaks on Bristol Palin and baby A house divided: Spouses split over candidates Undecided traveler? 5 questions to ask before voting Palin talks economic worries in Ohio Obama-supporting nun, 106, shocked by fame   New Yorker: Beyond the Palin Politics Section Front   Add Politics headlines to your news reader: