President Bush will deliver his State of the Union address on Tuesday. At some point, he'll pay tribute to some average Americans whom he has invited to the speech -- a tradition that Ronald Reagan started. Two years ago, Janet and Bill Norwood were guests of the first lady. They live in Texas, and are the parents of Byron Norwood, a Marine who died in the battle of Falluja. We talk with the Norwoods about what it meant for them to have their son mentioned by the president and how their lives have changed since that speech.

Then...
Many might be waiting to hear what President Bush has to say about the state of the union in his address next Tuesday, but we can pretty much guarantee that, like his last speech and the speeches of many presidents before, the short answer will be "strong." To keep ourselves awake and informed, we've decided instead to talk to several thinkers and authors about what they think the state of the union is.

Notes from Producer Krissy Clark

Every year embedded in the president's state of the union address is a sentence that goes something like this: "Tonight the state of our union is...dot dot dot." and then the nation's health is boiled down into one word or phrase.

Just as we were getting into World War II, FDR told us that the union was "never more closely knit together-this country was never more deeply determined to face the solemn tasks before it."

In the wake of Nixon's resignation and Watergate, Gerald Ford bluntly told us in 1975 that "the state of the union is not good."

In 2002, right after September 11, Bush said this: "As we gather tonight, our nation is at war, our economy is in recession, and the civilized world faces unprecedented dangers. Yet the state of our union has never been stronger."

In fact, every year Bush has been in office he's used some form of "strong." Last year he told us that the state of the union was "strong" -- and that "together we will make it stronger."

But there are hundreds of other ways one might describe the state of the union right now. We asked some of our favorite writers and thinkers from around the country to give us their own perspective on what the state of the country is right now.