( CNN ) -- `` To report the state of the union . '' Within the first few seconds of President Barack Obama 's address Tuesday night , he quoted the late President John F. Kennedy , who 51 years ago used those words to describe a president 's annual duty . As Obama spoke , citizens around the country were tapping away at keyboards , posting and sending messages -- public and private -- characterizing their own view of how the union , and its president , are faring . Obama told the packed House of Representatives chamber : . `` We can say with renewed confidence that the state of our union is stronger . '' Rothkopf : This time , a president in full . And those citizens around the country , typing away , were in essence saying : . We 'll be the ones to decide that , thank you very much . It is one of the most profound changes a modern president faces : The fact that the day is long gone when a chief executive can declare what the status of the nation is and have the words be treated as a one-directional proclamation rather than as the first salvo in an instant conversation . Twitter reported that as Obama discussed the middle class and minimum wages , its users were posting messages at the rate of 24,000 per minute . Tweets on State of the Union . The State of the Union address , for more than a century -- from Thomas Jefferson to Woodrow Wilson -- was not even delivered verbally to Congress . It was handed to the House and Senate on paper , and then printed -- usually in full -- in newspapers across the country . Americans studied the words as they would a major company 's annual report . The official version -- the hot-off-the-presses results of the nation 's yearly physical exam . The dynamic , of necessity , has been forever altered . Welch : Obama 's 'do-something ' plan for a 'have-nothing ' government . `` I 'm also issuing a new goal for America , '' Obama said Tuesday night , and before he could even complete the sentence , he had to know that there were plenty of people who would automatically reject whatever words would follow and would not be shy about it . Self-doubt is a characteristic that a modern president of either party must banish as he speaks . If he were to dwell on the fact that every single syllable he utters is being dissected in real time , it would be understandable if he were unable to make it through a paragraph . `` We know what needs to be done , '' Obama said , but that word -- `` we '' -- is itself open to daily dispute . A president 's voice may be , symbolically , the loudest in the republic , but it is one voice among hundreds of millions , most of them with the technological power to talk right back . Democracy , at warp speed . Slaughter : Obama dares Congress to get the job done . That endless and instantaneous conversation -- and it is only going to grow more constant in the decades to come -- is the contemporary reality to which each president must now adjust , the fresh fact of civic life . It is , in a fundamental way , the new state of the union . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Bob Greene .
Presidents are required to report on the state of the union . For a long time , reports were delivered in writing ; today there is a speech . Bob Greene : The president delivers his State of the Union address every year. Twitter users were posting tens of thousands of messages a minute .