Our resident humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson says the 2023 State of the Union address was in keeping with a tradition dating back to the republic’s founding, including an increasing element of ‘bread and circuses,’ a mix of political policies and entertainment, ceremony and spectacle, in service of endless campaigning by both parties.

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Additional audio courtesy of C-SPAN, Lindrebox, Neural Network and Deep Learning, the National Archives and the Presidential Libraries of Woodrow Wilson, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama.