Pearlstein takes a stab at speechwriting

And knocks the State of the Union out of the park:

My fellow Americans, the state of our union is . . . well, quite wretched at the moment. As president, I owe you that honesty and candor.
...
I look forward to discussing these initiatives with you. I am open to reasonable and principled compromises. But there will be no more games, no more business as usual -- just straight talk and the hard work of governing. On one thing we should all be clear: The do-nothing option is not acceptable -- not to me, and more importantly not to the voters who sent us here.

Well, unfortunately, I doubt we'll hear such straight talk tonight.