SOTU

I've never cared for presidential State of the Union addresses, no matter who is in office (I'm an equal opportunity cynic--I equally disliked Clinton's SOTU addresses). It's basically a big, hyped-up political rally in which the president's supporters mindlessly stand and spastically applaud like trained monkeys every third sentence while the other side sits and tries to look simultaneously respectful and disdainful, which looks more or less like constipation. Other than offering a national pulpit for the president, I'm not sure what it accomplishes. Wouldn't it be more fun to have the British system, in which members get to question each other and hoot and holler and jeer? Every year Gretchen has had to watch it for work because she was in the political world, so even if I didn't watch the whole thing I would inevitably catch enough bits and pieces to justify my decision to spend my time doing something more meaningful, like watching paint dry. Still, a bit of guilt would gnaw at me because I did, after all, live in Washington and have a background in political science and public policy. It was nice, then, to be here where the address was in the middle of the night and there was no feeling of duty whatsoever to watch.

Having said all that, for some reason I was even more repulsed than usual to read this morning that Congressional Republicans dipped their fingers in ink to display during the address. What, exactly, was the point of that? Are they trying to infer that they're as courageous as those who braved car bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan to vote? For some reason that gesture turned my stomach on a number of different levels.