The Ghosts of State of the Unions past

History repeats itself, and the major issues facing the U.S. today have already happened and will happen again.

President Obama just announced he would deliver his first true State of the Union address on Jan. 27, 2010. In preparation for his address, I have compiled a few common themes past presidents have discussed in their State of the Union addresses and researched some of President Obama’s recent speeches in an effort to predict what he will discuss. Here is some of my research in preparation for the address.

President Obama in a recent speech

While it may not be a surprise to anyone who has not been living under a rock for the past year to know what some of the major problems facing the U.S. are today, looking at one of the most recent speeches President Obama gave on Jan. 18 at a campaign rally for the open senate seat in Massachusetts can give us some insight into what he will be discussing. The themes he discussed about the senate candidate Martha Coakley were health care reform, financial regulatory reform and clean energy.

President Gerald Ford

Some of the themes from the State of the Union address President Gerald Ford delivered on Jan. 15, 1975 sound familiar to some issues the U.S. is still facing today. Ford’s presidency was plagued with recession and a gas shortage. The gas shortage prompted President Ford to speak of the need to lessen our dependence on foreign energy sources and our economic stability.

“Our growing dependence upon foreign sources has been adding to our vulnerability for years and years,” President Ford said. “And we did nothing to prepare ourselves for such an event as the embargo of 1973.”

He proposed plans to cut the U.S.’s dependency on foreign oil and to boost the U.S.’s own energy sources to have a surplus capacity in total energy to assure reliable energy and stability.

While we hear some of the same themes in Obama’s rhetoric, his is more focused on producing clean energy, not only for stability, but also for environmental reasons.

President Ronald Reagan

In his State of the Union from Jan. 26, 1982, President Reagan discussed economic problems and the need to work together to solve the problems the country was facing at the time. One interesting line from his speech echoed similar lines we have heard from Obama.

“This time, however, things are different. We have an economic program in place, completely different from the artificial quick fixes of the past,” Reagan said.

He is remaining optimistic and saying we are doing something to fix the problem, but it is going to take some time. He is urging the audience to hang in there and to not expect a quick fix. Throughout his presidency, Obama has consistently said our economic situation in the U.S. would not be fixed over night. In his speech at the campaign rally in Massachusetts on January 18, Obama brought up this again.

“People are frustrated and they are angry, and they have every right to be,” Obama said. “I understand; because progress is slow and no matter how much progress we make, it can't come fast enough for the people who need help right now, today.”

President George H. W. Bush

An entire Paragraph from President George H. W. Bush’s State of the Union from Jan. 29, 1991 resonates with the issues the nation is currently facing.

“A comprehensive national energy strategy that calls for energy conservation and efficiency, increased development, and greater use of alternative fuels; a banking reform plan to bring America's financial system into the 21st century so that our banks remain safe and secure and can continue to make job-creating loans for our factories, our businesses, and home buyers,” Bush said.

Nearly twenty years later, the themes Bush discussed are all issues with which we are currently dealing, and President Obama will probably discuss them on Jan. 27.