President Joe Biden’s second State of the Union address was one of the longest such speeches of the last 60 years.
Mr Biden’s speech on Tuesday night clocked in at one hour, 12 minutes, and 40 seconds – making it the eighth-longest State of the Union address of the last 60 years, according to data compiled by UC Santa Barbara's The American Presidency Project..
The addresses that outlasted Mr Biden’s speech on Tuesday night were delivered exclusively by two men: Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, with Mr Clinton giving four speeches that ran longer than Mr Biden’s and Mr Trump giving three. Mr Clinton’s 2000 speech lasted more than a quarter-hour longer than Mr Biden’s did, clocking in at nearly an hour-and-a-half.
Mr Biden hit on a number of different policy areas on Tuesday night including corporate greed, infrastructure, police reform, veterans affairs, and foreign policy. His speech lasted some 10 minutes longer than his first State of the Union address did last year.
In general, the length of State of the Union addresses tend to vary by president: Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan all gave relatively short addresses averaging no longer than 45 minutes, while Mr Clinton and Mr Trump were more longwinded.
The overall trend, however, is that the annual address has been getting shorter. In the 19th century, the average speech was roughly 10,000 words. By the late 20th century, it was only 5,000.
It’s not just the word count that determines the length of the speech. Mr Biden was interrupted by applause 100 times during his address on Tuesday night, with some of those applause breaks lasting for several seconds and more as members of Congress stood.
On several other occasions, Mr Biden was interrupted by shouts from an unruly Republican side of the House that at one point was shushed by Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
