Except diehard loyalists of the incumbent party. Nor should they, it seems. I suppose most of us, or at least those of us who aspire to be Informed Citizens, think of it as something we should pay attention to, but really have no interest in, and will be entirely unaffected by, except for a certain amount of vexation proportional to our dislike of the current chief executive.
Well, we shouldn't feel guilty about it, says Charles Cooke of National Review: yes, it's in the Constitution, but its current use as a platform for grandstanding by the president is a distortion of its intent. Cooke is one of those British immigrants who are more in sympathy with American ideals than most Americans are.
That the practice that Jefferson strangled was eventually resuscitated by that outspoken enemy of republican virtue, President Thomas Woodrow Wilson, should frankly worry anybody who is concerned about the maintenance of political balance in America. Champions of the legislature might be alarmed, too, to learn that, after the infinitely laudable Calvin Coolidge had reversed Wilson’s course, the spoken address was brought back once again by the most imperial of all America’s imperial presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Ignore it with a clear conscience.
Light On Dark Water 
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