I heard Mara Liasson on NPR earlier this evening saying she had been wracking her brain and couldn’t think of a SOTU address where the President was “facing a more difficult political landscape.” Oh, please.
Bill Clinton in January 1998 gave his SOTU just 10 days after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke to a Congress where both chambers were controlled by the opposition party and in the same room where he would be impeached within the year.
Or what about President Bush’s 2007 SOTU, just after his party had shockingly lost control of both chambers of Congress and with his lame duck administration deep in turmoil?
Not even a close call.