“He’s living in a time when you have to communicate through debates with people, as he did with Stephen Douglas,” says Kearns Goodwin. The Virginia Herald and Fredericksburg Advertiser noted that Washington “was dressed in a crow coloured suit of clothes, of American manufacture.” Abe Lincoln Masters Debate-and the TelegraphĪs presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin told HISTORY, Abraham Lincoln’s talent as president was the written word, but he first made his name as a gifted debater. Not unlike modern times, the president’s appearance was as important as his words. Washington knew that the speech would be published in the newspapers, so it was a message to the American people as well as Congress. The president praised Congress and gently offered suggestions regarding the creation of a national currency, a post office and a system of weights and measures, while also weighing in on more controversial topics (even then) like the national debt and immigration. Washington’s first State of the Union, like the first inaugural, was a “precisely calibrated political statement,” writes Anna Groves of George Mason University. Nine months later, on January 8, 1790, Washington fulfilled his constitutional duty ( Article II, Section 3) to “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.” That’s why George Washington played it very safe in his inaugural address, humbly declining to offer any suggestions or ideas to Congress. America had just unshackled itself from an English monarch and was on high alert for any signs of despotism in its new president.

George Washington was well-aware of the public scrutiny surrounding his presidency, the first experiment with executive power in the political experiment that was the United States.

Doris Kearns Goodwin on Communication George Washington's State of the Union Address

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