ABSTRACT
When the President held on to his draft of the State of the Union message in early 1972, refusing all comment until the last minute, the speech-writers asked Haldeman what was going on. Seated at the head of the staff table in the Roosevelt Room, he slumped back in his chair and ran a pencil through his crewcut: “I dunno. This may be the first extemporaneous State of the Union message in American history.”
