Some State of the Union Trivia

If you are wondering how much time to set aside to watch tonight’s State of the Union address, figure on about one hour and five minutes. And if you are also wondering about the over/under on the number of words President Obama will use in his speech, go with 7,304. That’s what he averaged in his first two State of the Union addresses. (Yes, people do indeed track both how long it takes a president to deliver the State of the Union address and how many words he uses doing it.) And if you were thinking (or as I have written) that Obama has given three State of the Union addresses, his 2009 address was technically an address to a joint session of Congress. I’ll leave it to better minds to explain the difference.

Here are some other fun facts about the State of the Union address:

I’ll be back tomorrow with a post-mortem on the speech.