How long does a State of the Union address usually take?

These former presidents hold the record for the longest, shortest, most verbose SOTU speech.

WASHINGTON. President Joe Biden is expected to avoid launching bright new initiatives in his second speech to the US Congress on Tuesday night, offering instead an optimistic view of the state of the country.

But the president still has a lot to cover as he seeks to counter pessimism and point to his party’s major pieces of legislation, all as the 2024 election approaches.

So, how long does the appeal to Congress last – and how much will it correspond to Biden’s latest statement? His first of the annual performances in 2022 was one hour, one minute and 50 seconds long. The shortest address by one of Biden’s predecessors was half as long, and the longest lasted almost an hour and a half.

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Here are some comparisons from 1964 (the first full year of Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency; he later gave SOTU’s first televised evening address) and beyond from the American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara.

Who gave the longest State of the Union address?

Bill Clinton holds the title of SOTU’s longest speech on record – his speech in 2000 lasted one hour, 28 minutes and 49 seconds.

While George W. Bush and Barack Obama cut their SOTU appearances to around 50 minutes and one hour, respectively, Donald Trump moved closer to the record. His 2019 SOTU performance was one hour, 22 minutes and 25 seconds long, and his average time was only two minutes shorter.

In fact, Clinton and Trump own the seven longest modern SOTU addresses ever. Clinton is ranked 1-2, 5 and 7, while Trump is 3-4 and 6.

Biden’s first SOTU speech, at approximately one hour, one minute, and 50 seconds, was more in line with Obama’s averages than Trump’s or Clinton’s speeches.

The record for the longest SOTU written address is held by another former president: Jimmy Carter with 33,667 words in 1981. Carter, whose SOTU oral addresses averaged about 37 minutes and 3,750 words, chose only the written version that year over a prime-time televised address. which has become the standard.

Who gave the shortest address of the State of the Union?

At 28 minutes, 55 seconds, Richard Nixon’s 1972 speech is the shortest SOTU oral speech in the history of the American Presidency Project.

In terms of written versions, George Washington had the shortest annual message to Congress, at just 1,089 words. The rest of his SOTU speeches were longer, but not by much; its longest was still less than 3,000 words.

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texasstandard.news contributed to this report.

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