Behind the scenes of writing the 2012 State of the Union: transcript

Key points

• The State of the Union is an important moment for presidents to lay out where the country is and where it needs to go.
• A first complete draft was finished a week before the speech, and the president had already made many edits.
• The president is involved from conception through development and writes much of the speech himself.
• The speech has to carry one message covering the economy, American values and foreign policy.
• Policy, economic, energy, national security, research and new media staff all contribute, including fact-checking.
• People mentioned in the speech are invited to put a human face on the policies, and viewers are urged to listen to the ideas on manufacturing, energy and skills.

Chapters

1. 0:00Why the State of the Union matters
2. 0:30First draft and the president's edits
3. 1:38Choosing the policies that make the speech
4. 2:48Staff input, fact-checking and structure
5. 3:31Putting a face on policies and a closing appeal

Full transcript

0:00This is a transcript with proper punctuation. You know, these have always been important moments for presidents to lay out where they think the country is and where it needs to go. That's why it's so important to him. That's why he takes such ownership of the State of the Union, both in terms of the words and the types of policies that he wants us to develop. It's a pretty great moment in our democracy. This is, you know, all three branches of government The president is in the same room.

0:30We are one week away from the State of the Union. Finished the first draft, first complete draft, last night on Monday night. Now we're going to meet with the president. He read the draft last night. He made a lot of edits because I saw his draft when I went up there this morning. And now we're going to talk to him about it, hopefully within a half hour. Bad news is it's not there yet? No. The thing about President Obama when a speech like this is this is simply not an editing exercise. He's involved from conception through kind of the development process and then, you know, he writes a lot of the speech himself.

1:03Jon Favreau and I and certainly even the president will spend some time looking through past State of the Unions just to get a sense of those moments. He had lots and lots of thoughts and gave all kinds of edits, comments like this. Cody and I are now rewriting, reordering, re-editing. In a typical set of remarks, we have a basic message we want to get across. In this, we have a basic message we wanna get across that also incorporates every facet of the American economy, our values, and our foreign policy. So it's a little more complicated.

1:38In a sense, you develop a lot of policies that will be in the budget and proposed. And in a sense, the ones that make the State of the Union are a little bit like the players that make the all-star team. It's exciting to see all of the ideas that he has chosen to put forward, all sort of in prose and to see how much new stuff and new ideas he has. He really wanted us to focus on those types of economic policies that could have a tangible effect over these next few years in getting more Americans back into the top of high-paying, durable jobs that last.

2:15Part of this is going to be, I think, making real and concrete the vision that the president talked about in his speech in Kansas a few weeks ago. Ways that we're going to make this a more fair society, but also make it clear what it means, how it's going to affect people in their daily lives. The speechwriting team is extremely busy this time of year. At the end of the day, their job is to kind of weave it together according to the president's direction. But then he takes it and makes it his.

2:48Discussions about what he thinks the structure ought to be, the types of policies he'd like to be in there. You know, he's driving that process. We're making progress. I think the basics. It's exciting to see it go from, you know, a hodgepodge of interesting ideas, based on a vision that the president has presented to us, to something which articulates so clearly direction. We'll go to all of the policy folks, the economic team, folks who do energy, foreign policy, national security folks, the research department who may vigorously fact check it, the new media folks who will do an enhanced version online, people handling who's going to be in the first ladies box.

3:31We like to highlight the people who are going to be mentioned in this speech to sort of actually put a face to these policies. So the reason they get mentioned in this speech is to give reality and humanity to the policies that we're suggesting, and it's nice to have them there to make a really concrete connection. They're sort of representative of America. The big things that we could get done together as a country are going to be the common sense, bipartisan things you're going to hear the president talk about in the State of the Union on manufacturing, on energy, on building skills.

4:03These are common sense, good ideas that could help create jobs right now. I would just... Humbly encourage people to listen to the ideas. Listen to the specific ideas about what we can do to build a more lasting economy, to help the middle class, to solve our deficit problem in a fair way, to rebuild our manufacturing sector, to improve education and skills. Listen to the ideas. And if you like those ideas, if you think they make sense, then lift up your voice.

Source and licence

Recording: File:Writing the 2012 State of the Union Address (720p).ogv by The White House (2012-01-23), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

The transcript is machine speech-to-text by the TidyTools Audio & video transcriber; the summary, key points and chapters were written by Claude from that transcript. Both may contain errors: check the recording before quoting it.