On Tuesday, Donald Trump will become the first president to walk into the House chamber and deliver a second first address to a joint session of Congress.
“What the heck happened to Roll Call’s fact-checking standards?” some of you might be thinking. “Surely, they haven’t forgotten about Grover Cleveland, the first man to win nonconsecutive terms in the White House?”
Relax. Of course we haven’t. But back when Cleveland was our nation’s 22nd and then 24th chief executive, presidents sent over their annual addresses in writing. It was a tradition started by Thomas Jefferson, who found the idea of the president orating before a captive congressional audience a bit too monarchical for his tastes (or, some historians think, just hated giving speeches). It continued until Woodrow Wilson moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 1913. So, for his first annual message of his second term in 1893, Cleveland wrote a 12,000-word report that the poor congressional clerks had to read.
