If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, what can be said of plagiarism? President Obama's second State of the Union address contained enough recycled ideas and lines lifted from speeches of others to make historians wince. I suppose this is what one does when one not only has nothing new to say, but is required by custom and Constitution to come forth with a report of some kind by a certain time and day.

If there is an intellectual core in President Donald Trump's 2019 State of the Union speech, it came in the section on undocumented immigration. In it, Trump cast the country as divided between elites and the working class, with Trump on the side of the working class and Democrats as the champions of the elites.