Albert R. Hunt, Columnist

Trump's Great Chance to Tell Us What He Really Wants

There's a lot of confusion to clear up when the president addresses Congress Tuesday night.

February 26, 2017 at 3:00 PM UTC

Corrected

February 28, 2017 at 1:46 PM UTC

Albert R. Hunt is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was the executive editor of Bloomberg News, before which he was a reporter, bureau chief and executive Washington editor at the Wall Street Journal.

Everybody's listening.
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President Donald Trump’s initial address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night may be the most anticipated in memory. Not, as Trump would claim, because he's so compelling. Rather it’s because, when it comes to substance, we don’t know who he is.

For Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, a first February speech to Congress was a chance to add definition to well-articulated policy architecture. Trump, by contrast, has conveyed little sense of a governing structure, preferring to recycle the insults and cliches that defined his campaign.