Former Indiana governor and OMB Director Mitch Daniels merits a U.S. House floor standing ovation from both parties for writing last weekend that presidents should no longer deliver State of the Union addresses to joint sessions of Congress.

Daniels said that the SOTU has devolved into a “tasteless, classless spectacle” and “a tired, farcical theatrical experience more likely to promote cynicism than citizenship in its viewers.” He’s right, but a few examples would have helped make his point.

First, there is the by-now familiar scene in which, dozens of times per speech (and as well described in an online column), “Half the House chamber is boisterous and bouncing up and down for standing ovations during President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address. The other half is somber and still, amid a sea of black clothes.” The last thing America needs is yet another, stark visual reminder that the partisan and ideological divides in Washington are growing ever-wider.

Within the past ten years we’ve seen a president verbally denigrate Supreme Court justices who sat in the front row staring up at him, nearly half of Congress applauds the rude rebuke, and one of the justices respond by mouthing the words “simply not true” about what the president said. We’ve also had a congressman yell out “ you lie” in response to a presidential SOTU claim. This is hardly a recipe for improving Americans’ faith in their government.

When the president himself is moved to pronounce the other side “un-American” and “treasonous” for failing to applaud him, we clearly have reached a point at which what was meant to be a unifying, enlightening ceremony, elevating the level of civic discourse, has instead become an occasion for discord and vitriol.

And of course the pundits all immediately leap in after with vitriol of their own. The president’s speech was “ designed to troll” the other side, or “ jingoistic,” or “ attacker-in-chief,” whatever other calumny they can hurl. This “poisonously partisan” atmosphere (as another columnist described it) shows we’ve come a long way from when liberal Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neill could sit behind conservative Republican Ronald Reagan and laugh genially, and without artifice, at Reagan’s humor.

The speech also gets in the way of congressional business. Most Capitol Hill staffers dread it. Just when Congress is finally hitting its stride after a start-of-the-year legislative lull, members and staff effectively lose a full day and a half preparing for and responding to the SOTU, with Hill security especially tight and intrusive and all other legislative business put on hold.

A written speech, as Daniels suggests, or even one given from the Oval Office or the East Room of the White House, would satisfy the constitutional requirement for periodic reports on the union’s health without the disruption and tawdry spectacle. And, if some national crisis provides reason, and sentiment, for a unifying address, then on such a special occasion the president and speaker could agree for a future SOTU to come back to the House chamber – not as an expected, annual occasion, but specifically because the crisis makes it a valuable way to rally the country in a bipartisan way.

Either way, Daniels is right that the SOTU, however it is delivered, needs to re-establish itself as an occasion for “dignity and sobriety.” Right now, it’s a nasty farce.