By Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

It just keeps getting worse and worse. That was my initial reaction after reading in the newspaper that Speaker Nancy Pelosi had blocked President Trump from giving the State of the Union address because of their disagreement over the government shutdown.

Upon further reflection: If it doesn’t happen, will anyone really miss it?

If the SOTU were an annual description of national challenges and solutions, it would be worthwhile. Instead, it is boring and pointless political theater.

Year after year, Americans are subjected to the same show. The president makes his way through the crowded aisles. He offers a laundry list of policy proposals, most of which have no chance of passing and often serve mostly to satisfy his base or some political interest group. His party’s members interrupt constantly with standing ovations while the opposing party’s members sit stone-faced. Then the opposing party gets its own speech.

That’s an hour-and-a-half we never get back, and of course it must be followed by pundits – which I guess I’m one – telling us what it all means.

It doesn’t have to be this way, and it wasn’t for much of the nation’s history.

The Constitution requires the president 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.”

It says nothing about a speech, and most presidents haven’t given one. George Washington provided a written report. John Adams, the nation’s second president, gave the first oral address in 1800, but it was only 1,372 words, about twice as long as this column. Most presidents followed Washington’s example until the dawn of the media age. Franklin Roosevelt gave speeches, while Harry Truman’s 1947 speech was the first to be televised. Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 address was the first delivered in prime time.

Everything that the SOTU is meant to accomplish can be done in other ways. The constitutional requirement is easy: Presidents inform Congress and recommend measures all the time. Moreover, a president can communicate with the American people in many other ways. Trump gave a nationally televised address about immigration on Jan. 8. And in those big moments that call for national unity, the president can still address a joint session of Congress.

Indeed, the most consequential presidential speeches in recent history have occurred outside of the SOTU. Those would include Roosevelt’s request for a declaration of war against Japan, delivered before a joint session of Congress the day after Pearl Harbor; John F. Kennedy’s exhortation to put a man on the moon, which also occurred before a joint session; and Ronald Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” which occurred in front of the Berlin Wall.

Those speeches were memorable because the president had something important to say, not because it was January and we do this every year.

All that said, the SOTU does at least give Americans a chance to see the parties’ competing overall visions unfiltered by the media.

So perhaps we could “mend it, don’t end it,” as Bill Clinton said of affirmative action in a 1995 speech at the National Archives Building. Maybe it could occur every other year at the beginning of a new Congress.

Or maybe the president and the Congress could follow Arkansas’ lead. On Jan. 15, Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s State of the State speech did what the Constitution says the SOTU is supposed to do. It offered a description of the state’s condition and laid out his vision and priorities for the legislative session.

In other words, it had a purpose beyond scoring meaningless political points. Including his introduction, swearing in, and numerous but brief episodes of applause, it lasted less than 30 minutes.

You can watch it in half that time if you speed it up on YouTube.