Give annual "State of the World" address

No speech in first year

Updated: Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 | By Lukas Pleva

It's been a month since our last update on President Obama's campaign promise to deliver an annual "State of the World" address, a speech in which he would seek to outline the guiding principles of U.S. foreign policy.

At the time, we found that though President Obama has made several foreign policy speeches, none of these were ever advertised by the White House as a "State of the World" address. Our extensive searches through Google, VoteSmart, and White House archives found no such speech. We rated the promise Stalled, since President Obama still had a month left before he hit the one-year mark since taking office.

Now, at the one-year mark since Obama was sworn in, we again checked the White House Web site, Google, and the VoteSmart database, and found he still hasn't given the speech and there are no plans to give it. In fact, the only foreign policy-related speeches that President Obama has made since December 2009 were his remarks on recovery efforts after the earthquake in Haiti.

He's had a year but hasn't given the speech. So we rate this one a Promise Broken.

Sources:Searches of Google, VoteSmart, and the White House, January 19, 2010.

No speech yet

Updated: Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 | By Lukas Pleva

During the campaign, Barack Obama promised to deliver an annual "State of the World" address. The speech appears conceptually similar to the annual State of the Union address, during which the president reports on the condition of the nation and outlines his legislative priorities.

Since taking office, President Obama has given many speeches on a wide variety of subjects, including foreign policy. Among the most significant of these are the Dec. 1, 2009, remarks at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., on the future of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan; the June 4, 2009, speech in Cairo, Egypt, on the relationship between United States and the Muslim world; and the Dec. 10, 2009, speech that President Obama delivered in Oslo, Norway, while accepting his Nobel Peace Prize.

But none of those speeches was billed as his "state of the world" speech. A search of the White House Web site and an archive of Obama's speeches on VoteSmart.org found no speeches by the name.

Obama still has one month left to keep this promise, but we see no signs of action. So we're going to rate it Stalled.

Sources:The Huffington Post, President Obama's Cairo Speech: Full Text , June 4, 2009.

The White House, Press Release: Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation on the Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan , December 1, 2009.

The White House, Press Release: Remarks by the president at the Acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize , December 10, 2009.

Search of VoteSmart.org and White House Web sites