Fortified Properly For the State of the Union Speech

People ask about my soft spot for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and from now on I’m just going to point them to this article.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg admits to sharing some wine with her colleagues and not being “100 percent sober” for President Obama’s State of the Union address in January. …


“The audience for the most part is awake, because they’re bobbing up and down, and we sit there, stone‐​faced, sober judges. But we’re not, at least I wasn’t, 100 percent sober,” Ginsburg said during a talk at George Washington University on Thursday night, according to a report by The Blaze. 


“Because before we went to the State of the Union, Justice Kennedy brought in … it was an Opus something or other, very fine California wine […,” Ginsburg said.]


Ginsburg has also appeared to fall asleep during the president’s annual address to Congress in prior years.

As my Cato colleague Gene Healy has written, the annual speeches have long been “pompous, unedifying spectacles” in which Congressmembers clap robotically while “the president stands at the front of the House chamber making exorbitant promises that would shame a carny barker” and a supposedly typical citizen or two are invited to showcase touching, politically well‐​vetted personal tales. Any legislative proposals of interest will require analysis over days or weeks, a process not well suited to in‐​person lecturing. “President Jefferson, who thought delivering the speech before Congress assembled smacked too much of a king’s ‘Speech from the Throne,’ ” converted the report to a written document, Gene writes, but Woodrow Wilson (it would be him) revived the regal practice.


For bringing to this hard‐​to‐​endure, self‐​important ritual the attitude it deserves, a thanks to Justice Ginsburg.