much since the early turn of the century, woodrow wilson onward, there has always been a state of the union every year. you look at the one year there wasn t, and that was ronald reagan had to delay his state of the union because of the challenger tragedy. and it s such an important exercise for any administration to assess their priorities, because, shockingly, sometimes policy doesn t really start to come together until a big public moment and a bunch of separate government entities are forced to work together and hammer out the facts that undergird all of the policies. so i do think this is an important exercise for any administration, as boring as the state of the union can be, it actually serves an important purpose in the functioning of government. and of course there s nothing in the constitution that requires it, it can be by letter, the venue doesn t matter, but the tradition has been the house of representatives, which is controlled by the speaker.