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Behind the scenes of the SOTU

The White House released a behind-the-scenes video on crafting President Obama's 2012 State of the Union address.

The White House released a behind-the-scenes video on crafting President Obama's 2012 State of the Union address. It focuses less on the content of the speech and more on the collaborative process itself — the late nights, the brainstorming sessions, the drafts, the rewriting, fact-checking, studying past SOTU speeches. Rinse. Repeat.Snippets of the video reminded me of The Last Word's own intro for our nightly Rewrite segment, with the scribbled out words and sentences. Anyone else notice that?White House senior advisor David Plouffee, Director of the National Economic Council Gene Sperling, the White House director of speechwriting Jon Favreau co-star in the clip.


Sperling described Obama as someone who "takes ownership" of his words and the policies he's developing.Jon Favreau said he finished writing the first draft one week before the SOTU.