It is not, as it happens, the first time women have used clothing to send a message: at Mr. Trump’s first address to a joint session of Congress last year, many of them wore suffragist white. In both cases, they let their clothes do the talking for them.

— Vanessa Friedman

Voices from speechwriters past.

Jonathan Horn, speechwriter for former President George W. Bush, has these thoughts:

“That’s part of the problem for Donald Trump going into the State of the Union. He could come out with a very traditional State of the Union and for a normal president, that would help set the agenda for at least, you know, maybe a few weeks. In Washington, you’d plan other policy speeches to follow up on certain aspects of the State of the Union and there would be an entire rollout around the State of the Union. I think with this president, you would expect it would be much shorter. Even if there is a surprise — Oh, look, Donald Trump sounded presidential — but then the next day there could be a tweet, and then, you know, work on a very, very long speech is overshadowed by a 280 characters. That’s my one prediction. In some sense, whatever he ultimately says is overshadowed by a 280-character tweet.”

Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at N.Y.U. School of Law and a speechwriter for former President Bill Clinton, also weighed in:

“The power of that podium is not just the audience watching. It’s the sense that the president is somebody who speaks for the whole country. And the way he has governed over the past year has been so filled with denunciations and racial division and flat-out falsehoods that he doesn’t have a lot in the tank when it comes to credibility for anybody who isn’t already an avid supporter. Often, these State of the Union addresses can be a time when the panoply of the presidency can give whoever the president is, sort of, a second chance with a lot of people. I’d be surprised if that’s the case here.”

Cody Keenan, chief speechwriter for former President Barack Obama, also had concerns:

“President Obama always wanted to close his State of the Union addresses with an argument about the state of our politics. You know, what can we do to make them better? What can we do to be better citizens? I always remember reading criticisms the next day, certainly from the left, saying why is he wasting real estate in the speech on that? It’s never going to happen. “Well, that’s part of leadership. You know, there’s a vision of what we should be, even if the odds of us getting there in one year or eight years is pretty slim.”

— Interviews by Michael D. Shear

Unfamiliar with the guests in the first lady’s box? Here’s some history.