Watch: 4 Republicans Flub Response to Obama State of the Union

Marco Rubio getting ready for his State of the Union response last year. Note the lack of a visible source of water. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/57209931@N03/8468722497/in/photolist-dUmq9R-fLmxn2-hL6GWS">Speaker John Boehner</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

This story was first published in 2014.

President Barack Obama is set to deliver his 2014 State of the Union address on Tuesday night. Early leaks suggest a speech that will focus on steps to fight economic inequality, particularly by increasing the minimum wage and expanding universal pre-K. But let’s forget all that silly policy gibberish for the moment and instead focus on what the State of the Union really means: It means a Republican politician has an unparalleled opportunity to really embarrass herself.

The State of the Union response is typically a plum given to one of the opposition party’s up-and-comers, and on Tuesday the honor will go to Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the highest-ranking woman in the GOP House leadership. But she may want to think twice before celebrating: In recent years, Republicans have found it an unenviable gig, more likely to stall or sink a rising politician than aid their ascent.

The president’s speech opens with a long, applauded walk to the podium, along which he can’t help but be bear-hugged by every random House member. He takes the stage before a rapturous crowd in a grandeur House chamber, and he gets approximately a gazillion standing ovations.

If you’re the responder, that’s a tough act to follow. The networks will cut to you standing in a room, usually by yourself, awkwardly staring into a camera. Your speech writers probably had a general sense of what the president was going to say, but without specifics in advance, you’ll be left unprepared to rebut his arguments and be forced to speak in broad generalities. It’s a setup that makes these speeches droll, bland, and inoffensive affairs.

But that doesn’t mean they can’t be memorable, as a string of gaffes from Republican responders in the Obama era shows. Here’s a brief selection of highlights:

2009: Obama didn’t give an official State of the Union address in 2009 since he’d just been inaugurated. But the president did trek down Pennsylvania Avenue to speak before a joint session of Congress that had the same pomp and circumstance. Republicans jumped at the opportunity, offering Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal the respondent’s slot. Jindal, long talked about as a potential national candidate, fell to Earth after the speech. He retread the same old “small government is good” arguments in a hackneyed, “amateurish,” manner that even disappointed the Fox News crowd. Adding insult to injury, the next night Jimmy Fallon invited Georgia-born actor Jack McBrayer on his show to parody Jindal’s speech.

2010: Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell got the honors for Obama’s first official State of the Union. And McDonnell, who had just been elected governor a few months before, actually gave a compelling speech, generally considered the best response of the Obama years. He ditched the lone-man routine and spoke before a receptive audience in Virginia’s Capitol building, matching at least a bit of Washington’s ceremony. It catapulted his national reputation and fed presidential speculation—speculation that disappeared when his administration became embroiled in corruption charges. Last week, the feds indicted McDonnell and his wife for accepting thousands of dollars worth of luxury gifts from a political supporter seeking favors from his administration.

2011: Rep. Paul Ryan, a good-looking GOP boy wonder, was poised to offer a dynamic alternative vision for the role of government. Instead, the Wisconsin congressman turned in a snoozefest—and was upstaged by another House Republican. Minnesota’s Michele Bachmann gave the inaugural “Tea Party Response,” a collection of her normal out-there theories. But everyone was too distracted by technical difficulties—she spent the entire speech staring vacantly off camera—to pay much attention to her words.

2013: Last year, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s response gave us the crème de la crème of viral moments. After opening solid, Rubio was making his way through a fine speech until physical discomfort began to set in. He looked visibly uncomfortable, smacking his lips, doubt creeping into his brow. Finally, after speaking for 11 minutes, he caved, the risk of dry mouth too great. He did his best to maintain eye contact with the camera. But his eyes betrayed panic as he lunged offscreen to nab a minute bottle of water and audibly gulp down some relief.

Please enjoy that moment over and over again in full slow-motion glory:

Here’s to 2014!

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate