“Come on John.  You are coming with me.”

The raspy voice belonged to Corinne Michel, the wife of House Minority Leader Robert Michel, and probably one of the nicest people I have ever met.

Mrs. Michel, an avid smoker, had a wry sense of humor and very level head. The mother of four grown (and successful kids) and the wife of one of the most powerful men in Washington, Corinne could spot bullshit from a mile away.

I think she was getting a kick out of taking me out of the Capitol building and bringing me to my first (and so far in my life my only) visit to the Vice President’s residence.

I wasn’t exactly clear why we were going, but it had something to do with a woman from Peoria who died of breast cancer. We arrived at the residence, and I walked into a nicely appointed room filled with very imposing and somewhat intimidating group of professional women.

I was the only man in the room. Mrs. Michel smiled and introduced me to the Vice President’s wife. “Hello Marilyn,” she said, “This is John Feehery.” I shook her hand and Marilyn Quayle smiled. “He’s one of our top interns.” The smile disappeared and Quayle abruptly turned away and talked to somebody else.

Mrs. Michel laughed. I thought to myself about Mrs. Quayle, “what a bitch,” but, of course, I didn’t say anything.

Gathered together were the power ladies of Washington, and they were busy organizing a 5k race to raise money for the Susan Komen Foundation. Komen was from Peoria, and she had been diagnosed with cancer at age 33 and died at age 36, far too young to be taken from the earth.

Komen’s sister, Nancy Brinker, had promised that she would do everything she could to find a cure for breast cancer, and Brinker believed that by having a road race on Pennsylvania Avenue, which included celebrities like Marilyn Quayle and the Vice President, it could draw more awareness to the foundation and to the disease.

Brinker had started the foundation in Dallas 7 years before, and had been successful there, but wanted to take the show on the road. Washington was an important place to expand the race to, and I had been invited by Mrs. Michel to participate in the planning meeting to make the Washington D.C. race successful.

When you are a 25-year-old guy surrounded by a bunch of power women dressed in power suits, talking about their power relationships, and flaunting their power rings, you keep your mouth shut. And that is exactly what I did.

23 years later, the Susan Komen Foundation is ubiquitous. It runs ads on television to help raise money. It has races, walks, bike rides and a bunch of other programs. And apparently it has been so successful in raising money; it can give some of that money away to other organizations.

One group that apparently used to get money from the Susan Komen Foundation is Planned Parenthood. Those donations have stopped this week, and it has caused quite a stink with a bunch of women who fervently believe in the right to have an abortion.

I, for the life of me, don’t understand what Planned Parenthood has to do with the original purpose of the Susan Komen Foundation, which I thought was to find a cure for breast cancer.

But I am not going to wade into that fight. That lesson I learned about keeping my mouth shut at the original Washington meeting of the Komen Foundation when a bunch of powerful women are engaged in a conversation, has stayed with me.

I would say that how the Foundation handled both the announcement and then the subsequent controversy is a perfect example of how not to do crisis communications. It seems that if a huge percentage of your most active participants and fundraisers are pro-choice females, you might want to be careful on how you announce a plan to cut off funding with Planned Parenthood.

They weren’t that careful and now they are facing heat from their biggest supporters.

As it usually goes in Washington, we now have a partisan fight on a subject that should unite just about everybody. And that is pretty sad.

Editor’s Note: John Feehery worked for former House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other Republicans in Congress. Feehery is president of Quinn Gillespie Communications. He is a contributor to The Hill’s Pundits Blog and blogs at thefeeherytheory.com.

Once again, Donald Trump trumped the rest of the world and made a grand opera out of an otherwise modestly interesting situation.

You may be aware that the Republican party of Nevada is holding its precinct caucuses tomorrow to choose delegates to the GOP national convention in Tampa in August.

There is not the frenzy that attended the Iowa caucuses because there have already been four election events in this GOP primary cycle even though Iowans not only got it wrong on election night, but lost the results of eight precincts and so when they got around to declaring the actual winner to be Rick Santorum (17 years after the event) the Iowa caucuses had no meaning.

And they may never have any meaning again.

Nevertheless, many of us are hoping that, given the training many citizens of Nevada have received to be able to calculate the payout on a hard six at the craps table, or a double-down at the blackjack stand that they will better able to count ballots than their Hawkeye brethren.

Where was I?

Oh, yes. Donald Trump.

I talk to a lot of people each and every day. Elected officials, journalists, senior political hacks, and just folks.

A lot.

That doesn’t mean I have talked to everybody, but of all the people I’ve talked to I have not had a single one say, “I’m waiting to see who Donald Trump is going to endorse before I decide for whom I’m going to vote.”

Or, “… who I’m going to vote for” which is grammatically incorrect but far less stuffy sounding.

Have you?

So, sometime on Wednesday night the campaign staff of Newt Gingrich began leaking the fact that Gingrich was going to be touched by The Donald on Thursday and receive his endorsement.

SIDEBAR

No one believes political endorsements mean much – if anything – but like a newspaper’s endorsement it is better to get one than for your opponent to get it.

Remember that as recently as South Carolina the major newspaper in Columbia, The State, made a passionate case as to why it was endorsing Jon Huntsman just hours before Huntsman withdrew from the race.

END SIDEBAR

Nevertheless, Trump was going to be a big “get” for Gingrich, helping him to make his case that he is the Washington outsider.

All morning the Twitter-verse was quivering with announced Facebook IPO and the expected Trump-Gingrich merger.

The Gingrich-verse was so taken by it that Gingrich cancelled a scheduled meeting with Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval to make room on his schedule for the endorsement event.

About 11 am Eastern time the story began to change as reporters got the word that the Romney campaign was putting a new event on the schedule; presumably the Trump endorsement.

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Walker, who is a senior advisor to the Gingrich campaign said, according to the Wall Street Journal, “he didn’t know of any contact between the former speaker’s campaign and Mr. Trump’s camp that would have caused the false rumor of an endorsement.”

Remember that the only reason the Gingrich campaign is still standing is because of the reported infusion of $10 million by Sheldon Adelson who is one of the major players in the casino business on the Las Vegas strip.

Trump – who has casino assets in Atlantic City and a hotel in Las Vegas – turned the entire show into a show about Trump. Romney was scenery.

The Wall Street Journal reported: Before unveiling his backing of Mitt Romney on live television Thursday afternoon, the real-estate mogul milled around the gilded lobby of the hotel bearing his name, holding multiple impromptu news conferences.

I Tweeted during the day that “On days like this remember that old saying: No matter how sound your position, there is always someone who agrees with you, you wish didn’t.”

The amount of chaff thrown up by the Trump endorsement might not have meant much in terms of votes, but it did have the beneficial effect of choking off commentary about Romney’s clanging statement from the day before about his lack of interest in the very poor.

Even though Romney was obviously saying the poor have a safety net and he was more interested in making certain the middle class didn’t descend into the ranks of the poor, it was immediately seized upon by Republicans and Democrats alike.

Romney owes Trump a big thank you, not so much for the endorsement, but for being Donald Trump.

Editor’s Note: Rich Galen is former communications director for House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senator Dan Quayle. In 2003-2004, he did a six-month tour of duty in Iraq at the request of the White House engaging in public affairs with the Department of Defense. He also served as executive director of GOPAC and served in the private sector with Electronic Data Systems. Rich is a frequent lecturer and appears often as a political expert on ABC, CNN, Fox and other news outlets.

As the primary contest goes on to Nevada, one has to wonder what former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s campaign must do to stop former Gov. Mitt Romney’s momentum after his overwhelming victory in Florida. If the Gingrich campaign has an effective fundraising plan, solid organizational structures in Super Tuesday states, and reconfigures his message to appeal to voters, then he should remain in the race. However, if he simply chooses to remain in the race because he wants to needle the Romney campaign until the convention, most GOP voters will not have the stomach for it. Romney allies took Gingrich down in Iowa and Gingrich returned the favor in South Carolina. Both waged an extremely negative campaign in Florida and Romney won.

Romney will likely win Nevada and Rep. Ron Paul could come in second place because both have organizations set up months ago there. Gingrich opened his campaign office in Nevada today. What does this tell us? It means that Gingrich does not have the resources to think very far ahead. After the loss in South Carolina, Romney’s machine turned like a dime and fired up the advertising, structure, and concentration it takes to win. He will likely do the same in upcoming primary states. Back in the summer, Republican operatives were buzzing that the Romney campaign was preparing for a long, divisive primary. We can see the fruits of their labor paying dividends. Gingrich must not simply stay in the race just to be the “alternative” and to criticize Romney. After 19 debates, we all know the weaknesses of every candidate. Gingrich must stay in the race if he has a strategy to pull off a miracle. If he doesn’t, the former speaker should bow out gracefully and concentrate his energy on defeating Barack Obama.

Editor’s Note: Ron Bonjean is a partner with Singer Bonjean Strategies and owner of The Bonjean Company, both full-service public-affairs firms. He was chief of staff for the Senate Republican Conference Chairman Jon Kyl of Arizona, and the top spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), U.S. Commerce Secretary Don Evans and other House members. Contact him at ron@singerbonjean.com

Mitt Romney won a big victory and that win should propel him to the nomination sometime by June, given the vagaries of the proportional delegate system put in place by the Republican National Committee.

But Romney shouldn’t feel that comfortable with his position in the party or with the state of his party at the moment. Sarah Palin can be dismissed as a goofball and an idiot for continuing to embrace Newt Gingrich, despite the former Speaker’s trouncing in the Sunshine State. But she speaks for many of the goofballs and idiots who make up a fairly large chunk of the Republican/Tea Party base.

And those goofballs/idiots could make up the critical difference between winning and losing in next November.

The Republican Party is a grand coalition of upper and upper middle class mainline Protestants and Catholics, evangelical Christians, white working class Catholics, a smattering of Cuban Americans in Florida, a smaller smattering of black conservatives, an even smaller smattering of Orthodox and conservative Jews, and a few other folks.

The party has now divided into two camps:  The Republican establishment and the Tea Party faction. The Republican establishment (which is mythical in its influence) tends to trend wealthier, is better educated, tends toward the Chamber of Commerce in its outlook politically, and probably has survived pretty well during the Great Recession. They probably have pretty warm feelings towards the Bush Administration, and while they didn’t like all the government spending, they are pragmatic about government spending that they find useful.

The Tea Party tends to trend more evangelical, is not as well educated, and tends to be populist in its political leanings. Tea Party members most likely have been hit hard by the Great Recession, and are angry as hell at Washington, at Wall Street, and at the local Republicans who have been working in the political system for decades. Many of these political newcomers learned a lot about political history from Glenn Beck and they listen carefully to Rush Limbaugh. They are mad as hell at both Barack Obama and George Bush, and they feel the political system has screwed them and continues to screw them.

The Republican establishment (and I cringe when I use that word) either supports Mitt Romney openly or finds him an acceptable alternative to Barack Obama. The Tea Party folks find Romney an elitist and a symbol of all that is wrong with our political system. More than a few of them also have strong objections to his religion.

Thanks to the wonders of the social media world, you can see the angst of the Tea Party sympathizers. They are despondent over Romney’s win. They see themselves as special “patriots” and they can’t understand why the rest of the party doesn’t see the world in their terms. They blame Mitch McConnell and John Boehner for the fact that the Senate isn’t doing anything (missing the point that because of Tea Party candidates, Harry Reid is still the Majority Leader). They are impatient. They are radical.  And they want results now. And they believe that because they are now involved in politics, they should get their way.

The Republican establishment is probably more patient than it ought to be. They don’t buy into the Beck dystopian view of America.  They don’t believe that the country is necessarily going to Hell in a hand-basket. They don’t necessarily believe that the government has no role in creating jobs. Much of the establishment used to revolutionaries in their own right twenty years ago, but they have been mugged by reality. They know the limits of our representative government.

Mitt Romney can’t ignore this cadre of Tea partiers. He can’t hope that they just go away. They don’t have a majority of the party, but they are crucial to his plans to beat Obama. And while it is true that they hate Obama, they doesn’t necessarily mean that they will come out to vote against him. Remember Pat Buchanan’s pitchfork brigades in 1992. They stayed at home (or voted for Ross Perot), and allowed Bill Clinton to waltz into the White House over George H.W. Bush.

Romney has to do two things, in my estimation. He has to pick an inspirational number 2 for his Vice President. Marco Rubio is the top choice, of course, but Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Rob Portman and Kelly Ayotte would also be good choices.

Most importantly, he has to offer a real reform agenda. The first priority has to be tax reform because Romney has proven to be extremely vulnerable on the tax issue. Republicans can’t lose the tax issue and expect to win the election. Romney has to say that something is wrong when he pays a smaller percentage in taxes than most Middle Class Americans, and that is why the tax code must be reformed. He also needs to talk about how is going to reform the government writ large, make it more user friendly, more taxpayer friendly and more frugal with the taxpayer’s dollars.

It still might not be enough to please the angry masses that make up the Tea party base. But Romney has to take some steps to insure that these folks don’t bolt and follow a Sarah Palin into a third party that will deliver a second term to Barack Hussein Obama.

Editor’s Note: John Feehery worked for former House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other Republicans in Congress. Feehery is president of Quinn Gillespie Communications. He is a contributor to The Hill’s Pundits Blog and blogs at thefeeherytheory.com.

No campaign for President is a straight line upward. Some campaigns are a flat line; some are a straight line down, but no Republican in a contested cycle has ever run the table.

Didn’t happen in 2012, either.

There is a theory in politics that the proper time to judge a campaign isn’t when everything is going well. The time to judge a campaign is how they recover from a stumble.

Ok. That’s not really a widely held theory, but I say it all the time and I think it’s true.

Last week Mitt Romney got skunked in South Carolina by Newt Gingrich. Over the course of five days and two debates Gingrich returned a punt, a fumble, and an interception, scored on a safety and pinned Obama deep in his own territory – everything an opposing candidate could have done within the football metaphors of Superbowl week.

Then came Florida. Big. Diverse. Expensive.

Romney and his campaign righted the ship and put the big hurt on Gingrich. Beat him by just under a quarter of a million votes. In fact, Gingrich and Rick Santorum’s votes combined didn’t equal Romney’s total.

That, in spite of Romney not just fending off his GOP opponents, but fending off something on the order of $6 million in negative ads from at least two unions, the Obama campaign and Obama’s Super PAC.

Obama does not want to run against Romney. He wants to run against Gingrich, or Santorum, or Paul.

After Gingrich got beaten up in Iowa by an onslaught of negative ads by Romney and his Super PAC his concession speech was all Angry Newt. Gingrich didn’t have the money to retaliate and tried to pretend he was going to be the Good Newt and he got hammered. On caucus night, when we all thought Romney had won, Gingrich’s anger and frustration overwhelmed him.

Gingrich was not a factor in New Hampshire and, properly, focused on South Carolina. A combination of Gingrich’s spectacular debate performances and millions of dollars poured into his Super PAC by a Las Vegas billionaire allowed him to attack Romney and pull off a big win.

The afterglow of that win on Saturday lasted until about Tuesday when Gingrich’s blah debate performance the night before, coupled with a well-organized Romney ground operation and millions and millions of dollars in TV advertising caused Gingrich’s numbers to plummet in Florida.

In the final Florida debate Gingrich seemed unprepared, tired, and off-balance. He who lives by the debate shall die by the debate. Two deadly debate performances did Gingrich in.

In his – we can’t call it a concession speech because he never mentioned, much less congratulated, Mitt Romney – remarks following the results in Florida Gingrich wasn’t angry, but it appeared he had not been playing close attention to the results.

At one point in his speech I Tweeted: Newt does know he lost, right?

The problem Gingrich faces now is there is not much on the horizon for the next three weeks that can change the story line (I’m trying to avoid the word, “narrative”) from his big loss last night. He will be lucky to come in third in the Nevada caucuses on February 4, the next debate isn’t until February 22, he is not likely to do terribly well in the seven-or-so electoral events this month so by the time we get to Georgia on Super Tuesday (March 6) Newt will have had nothing good going on to change the trajectory of the campaign.

Look for Gingrich, starting in about 30 minutes, to begin challenging Romney to a series of 27 Lincoln-Douglas debates each three hours in length with no pesky moderators.

That ignores Rick Santorum who has over a million dollars in the bank and has no reason to get out of this race. Santorum believes as deeply as does Gingrich that he (Santorum) is the true conservative and thus the true anti-Romney in the race.

It would not be terribly surprising if Santorum, through sheer will power, came in ahead of Gingrich in the Nevada caucuses.

Mitt Romney is in the driver’s seat. The win in Florida last night not just puts the wind at his back, but allows him to run wing-and-wing will all sails aloft in the biggest, fastest boat with the best crew in this race.

If the Obama campaign learned anything this week it was this: Mitt Romney didn’t get to be Mitt Romney by rolling over and whimpering in the face of adversity.

If Florida was the first round in the Fall election, Romney is now ahead on points.

SIDEBAR
I do know that I have used a football, a sailing, a car racing, and a boxing metaphor in this column. If I could have come up with a curling phrase I might have thrown that in, as well.

Editor’s Note: Rich Galen is former communications director for House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senator Dan Quayle. In 2003-2004, he did a six-month tour of duty in Iraq at the request of the White House engaging in public affairs with the Department of Defense. He also served as executive director of GOPAC and served in the private sector with Electronic Data Systems. Rich is a frequent lecturer and appears often as a political expert on ABC, CNN, Fox and other news outlets.

Did you read about the wife of the conservative Republican governor who spoke before a traditional marriage group and said that only “cowards” had prevented the state legislature from passing a law to guarantee the preservation of traditional marriage?  Surely, you saw the editorial denouncing her for interfering in such a sensitive subject.  You remember the outrage that the first lady, a sitting judge, had refused to set aside her personal point of view, rendering her unsuited to dispense “blind justice.”

You don’t remember any of this?  No wonder.  It never actually happened.  You know what did happen?  The wife of the liberal governor of Maryland, Catherine O’Malley spoke before what the Washington Post called “a national conference of gay-rights advocates.”  What did Mrs. O’Malley have to say?  In addressing the failure of the Maryland legislature to pass a law allowing for gay marriage, she “blamed the demise in the General Assembly on ‘some cowards that prevented it from passing.”  With the predictable outrage in response to her statement, Mrs. O’Malley has subsequently issued the predictable apology.

The article observes that “as a sitting judge, Catherine O’Malley is prohibited by a judicial code of conduct from engaging in partisan political activity.”  It goes on to note that “aides say that Catherine is passionate about legalizing same sex marriage.”

How about refraining from engaging in “partisan activities?”  Well, according to the article, “last year, the first lady met privately with several wavering lawmakers, urging them to support the bill.”  That sounds a little like lobbying.  Not to worry though.  “She said at the time that her advocacy was ‘just as a citizen.”

So, what’s my problem with all of this?  Just that the article appears in the Metro Section.  There is noeditorial condemning her involvement, much less one calling for her to resign as a judge.

Forget for a moment what your position on gay marriage is.  That is not the point here.  The point here is that if it had been a wife of a conservative governor, speaking before a traditional marriage group, calling opponents of what she wanted “cowards,” the Washington Post would have put the story—and not for a single day—on the front page of the news section.  Had that wife also been a judge and had that wife engaged in lobbying for legislation, the Post would have editorialized for her to resign.

As it stands now, the Washington Post can break its arm patting itself on the back congratulating itself that it “reported” the story.  Yes, indeed they did.  However, can anyone whose I.Q. exceeds single digits pretend they did it in the same way they would have, if the offensive remarks had come from a conservative?

It is this shaping of what counts and what is important—always with a liberal slant—that offends.  It is the idea that there are always two sets of rules.  Under the first set, crossing the street the wrong way by a conservative is “visible disdain for following the law.”  Under the second, armed robbery is a “principled attempt to feed one’s hungry family.”  It is wrong is what it is.

Editor’s Note: Bill Greener is a founding partner of Greener and Hook, a communications firm specializing in work for Republican candidates and private organizations facing public policy challenges. Formerly, he headed the political and communications divisions of the Republican National Committee, as well as serving as Convention Manager for the 1996 National Convention. Greener also has been an executive at International Paper and Wheelabrator Technologies.

In the 1981 classic movie, Absence of Malice, lead character Michael Gallagher tells reporter Meghan Carter that everything she wrote about him was accurate, but none of it was true.

I thought of that line as I watched the State of the Union speech January 24.  Everything the President said that night was accurate, but much of it wasn’t true.

That conundrum is among the principle reasons why governing has become so difficult and why Washington is so dysfunctional.

In order for opposing sides to negotiate their way to consensus, they must first agree on their facts.  They can have differing opinions on the meaning and import of those facts, but they have to get their facts straight first. Every parent knows you can’t resolve a dispute between two children until you know how it started and who id what to whom. You’ve heard it many times at the outset of political deliberation:  Let’s first determine on what we can agree before addressing that on which we differ.

President Obama in the State of the Union used a selective set of facts to create his perception of reality, and the very next day, the media, fact-checkers and his political adversaries were all over the speech offering different facts to discredit that perception.  By the end of the day, the public was no closer to understand the truth of their condition than they were before the speech.

For example, on natural gas the President said:  “And my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy.”

And later he said: “And by the way, it was public research dollars, over the course of 30 years, that helped develop the technologies to extract all this natural gas out of shale rock –- reminding us that government support is critical in helping businesses get new energy ideas off the ground.”

The next day, the National Journal wrote, “experts in the field say the truth is, the administration doesn’t need to do much to fuel the current natural-gas boom.  Companies are already developing domestic gas at almost unsustainable levels…”

And the research?  “Federal R&D for natural gas ended in the 1980s and 1990s, according to (Richard) Newell (Duke University professor who is former administrator of the Energy Information Administration). That’s well before the U.S. shale-gas formations were discovered starting around 2008.”

The President said “American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years, “ and that imports of foreign oil are down.  The House Resources Committee the next day reminded us that imports are down because gas prices are high and the economy is down. Federal production is actually only 19 percent of total U.S. production, down from 32 percent ten years ago.

President Obama said “over the last three years, we’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration.”  Accurate, but Resources Chairman Do Hastings said that leasing was authorized and scheduled under the Bush Administration.

On another subject, the President said, “In fact, I’ve approved fewer regulations in the first three years of my presidency than my Republican predecessor did in his.”

Accurate.  But it isn’t the whole story, according to FactCheck.org.  President Obama issued slightly fewer regulations than George Bush and Bill Clinton, but the Obama regulations are costing the economy more, much more, issuing more regulations carrying a cost of $100 million or more than both the Bush and Clinton administrations.

The speech is replete with such examples.  He also claimed credit for “putting more boots on the ground” at the borders.  Accurate, but FactCheck recalled it was President Bush who nearly doubled the number from11,000 to 20,000.  Obama only added 1,000 more.

There are more examples on everything from Chinese tire imports to job creation, education and immigration.

The President’s speech was accurate, but none of it said much about the truth of the state of our Union. It was a skillful exercise in political spin, the manipulation of facts, not a truthful presentation of them. That spin exercise, which now permeates the public dialogue on both sides of the political fence leaves us with a sophomoric ‘he said, she said’ discourse that gets us nowhere. We are simply running in place, without progress, without hope of coming together.  And the condition is chronic and badly exacerbated by media that thrive on contrast and shun consensus.

It is one of the factors that make governing so difficult. There are a number of others, of course, ranging from the polarization of the parties and reapportionment to the lack of civil discourse, the affects of money in politics, right down to congressional rules and procedures. But the inability or the unwillingness of opposing sides to even abide by the minimalist rules of negotiation and compromise, to simply agree on the facts, is among the root causes.

Abraham Lincoln in a speech in 1854 in Peoria, IL.,  in addressing the position of his arch rival, Stephen A Douglas,  said, “If a man will stand up and assert, and repeat, and re-assert, that two plus two do not make four, I know nothing in the power of argument than can stop him.  In other words, if you can’t even agree that 2+2+4, then there is no hope for resolution of your differences.

Accurate and so true.

Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.

The Long Run was one of the best albums ever produced, and I was thinking about the title song on Tuesday.

I have long believed that our federal government is far too focused on short-term thinking, and our policies are not built for the long run. And I think that most voters get that fact, which it is one of the reasons they are so frustrated with our national politicians.

Probably the best part of the President’s State of the Union speech came when he used the word “durable” to describe his vision of the American economy.

Of course, it was all bullshit, because the President has been the king of the temporary fix, but the sentiment is exactly right. Our economy needs to be built for the long run.

What does that mean?

Well, the tax code is not chock-full of short-term tax extenders that expire every year. The business community wants the tax policy, because they want to pay less in taxes. But they are never quite sure if the tax policy is going to continue or not, which means they can’t make any long-term planning decisions.

The President pushed through a short-term payroll tax holiday, which is turning into a longer-term payroll tax holiday.  This is terrible policy in the long run, because it puts the Social Security retirement system on weaker financial ground.

The Congressional budget process is also terribly inefficient in the long-run. Because Congress operates under an annual appropriations process (and frequently blows thought its own deadlines), the Federal government usually can plan only a couple of months in advance in how it is going to spend its money. This is extraordinarily inefficient and leads to billions of dollars in waste.

Planning for the long run would also mean coming up with a gradual plan to fix entitlement spending. We all know that Social Security and Medicare are going broke in the long run. We all know that if don’t fix the spending in these programs, we won’t be able to afford anything else in the budget. But because the President is so focused on his short-term prospects, he has done nothing to prepare us for the long run.

The regulatory process is another challenge for long term thinking. Every month, the Feds come up with a bunch of new regulations, which require the business sector to waste billions of dollars just to figure out how to comply. Hard to think long term when to don’t know what the government is going to do to you next.

If the President were serious about his durability argument, he would fight for a tax reform built for the next century, a biannual budget process, a freeze on new regulations for a year, and a plan to save our social safety net without busting the budget. I am not holding my breath.

Editor’s Note: John Feehery worked for former House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other Republicans in Congress. Feehery is president of Quinn Gillespie Communications. He is a contributor to The Hill’s Pundits Blog and blogs at thefeeherytheory.com.

One of the big things about the State of the Union address is talking about which Cabinet Secretary has been sent to an undisclosed location in case the Capitol Building goes up in a cloud of neutrons and there is no one left to run the government.

Last night that honor went to the Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack who was a former Governor of Iowa.

According to the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, after the Vice President, Speaker of the House, and President Pro Tempore of the Senate, the order of succession to the Presidency is: Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Defense, Attorney General, Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Labor, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Secretary of Transportation, Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Education, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Secretary of Homeland Security.

Which are more-or-less in the order the Cabinet Department was created.

When the Department of Homeland Security was stood up on March 1, 2003 there was some discussion as to whether the order of succession should be changed to put the DHS Secretary ahead of Interior, Ag, Commerce, HHS, HUD … and all those other Cabinet Secretaries who are responsible for seeds and rental units.

Alas, 18 senior government officials – including the President – have got to meet their makers before the Secretary of DHS can order new drapes for the Oval.

The Constitutional basis for a State of the Union address is found in Article II, Section 3, Clause 1: [The President] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information on the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.

Until the 1930s the address was simply known as the Annual Message. In 1942 it became known as the State of the Union address.

According to the Clerk of the House’s webpage: In the 19th century, the annual message was both a lengthy administrative report on the various departments of the executive branch and a budget and economic message.

After 1913, when Woodrow Wilson revived the practice of presenting the message to Congress in person, it became a platform for the President to rally support for his agenda.

Until 1934, the Annual Message was delivered every December.

From 1801 (Thomas Jefferson) until 1913 (Woodrow Wilson) the Annual Message was sent to the Congress as a written document. Wilson revived the tradition, begun by George Washington, of delivering the Annual Message in person.

Off and on, since then, Presidents have chosen to deliver a written message. The last time was Ronald Reagan’s 1989 message.

Famous firsts include the first radio broadcast by Calvin Coolidge in 1923. The first televised broadcast by Harry Truman in 1947. And, the first evening speech by Lyndon Johnson in 1965.

The first time a President made reference to a guest in the gallery was in 1982 when President Reagan invited, and recognized, Lenny Skutnik whom he had invited to attend.

On January 13, 1983 an Air Florida flight left National Airport in a snowstorm, didn’t gain height and crashed into the Potomac River just north of the airport. A flight attendant, Priscilla Tirado, swimming in the freezing water, was too weak to grasp a rope dropped by a rescue helicopter.

Skutnik, a clerk in a U.S. Government office, saw her distress, stepped out of his coat and boots and dove into the Potomac River and pulled Tirado to safety.

He was recognized by President Reagan saying: “We saw the heroism of one of our young Government employees, Lenny Skutnik, who, when he saw a woman lose her grip on the helicopter line, dived into the water and dragged her to safety.”

Since then, Presidents have invited guests to sit in the First Lady’s box for political, patriotic or social reasons.

President Obama’s speech last night, like almost all which have been delivered in writing or in person before, fulfilled that simple requirement that the President “from time to time give Congress information on the state of the union.”

It is a very nice custom, highly anticipated in Washington, DC, totally forgotten within hours of its delivery but links Presidents in an unbroken line back to George Washington.

Editor’s Note: Rich Galen is former communications director for House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senator Dan Quayle. In 2003-2004, he did a six-month tour of duty in Iraq at the request of the White House engaging in public affairs with the Department of Defense. He also served as executive director of GOPAC and served in the private sector with Electronic Data Systems. Rich is a frequent lecturer and appears often as a political expert on ABC, CNN, Fox and other news outlets.