State of the Union: best presidential guests His moustache really deserves a shout-out all of its own. 2) In 1990 George HW Bush extended the hand of bipartisanship and invited a young Arkansas governor to attend his State of the Union address in recognition for his work on education. Two years later that young governor, one Bill Clinton, repaid Bush's kindness by beating him in the election and driving him from the Oval Office after one term. It's all good now, though - presidents 41 and 42 are best buds and Barbara Bush even went so far as to say Clinton views the elder Bush as "a little bit like the father he didn't have." 3) In March 1981 a lone gunman shot Ronald Reagan as he left a Washington hotel. The president made a quick recovery but his press secretary, Jim Brady, was shot in the head and never fully recovered. The shooting prompted one of the first rounds of national soul searching on guns but it took another 13 years before the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act was signed into law. Brady was acknowledged by Bill Clinton for his work during the 1994 State of the Union. 4) In 1999, the Dominican baseball player Sammy Sosa seemed to have it all: one of baseball's best hitters and a philanthropic hero. He sat next to Hillary Clinton and beamed as her husband hailed his work opening hospitals in his native Dominican Republic. Ten years later, though, his role model image was tarnished by allegations that he was pumped up on steroids during his professional career. 5) Clinton also used his 1999 address to single out Rosa Parks, the civil rights icon whose refusal to go to the back of a segregated public bus was one of the turning points in the American civil rights struggle. As Clinton put it: This journey began 43 years ago when a woman named Rosa Parks sat down on a bus in Alabama and wouldn't get up. She's sitting down with the first lady tonight, and she may get up or not, as she chooses. 6) Debbie Bosanek is far from a household name. She's not a national hero, nor a sports star, or a civil rights legend. Instead she's the secretary to Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, who realised that his rate of tax was lower than hers because his money came from capital gains while hers was from a salary. The conundrum inspired the so-called "Buffett Rule" on tax policy and Barack Obama invited Mrs Bosanek to attend the speech where he proposed it. 7) Bobak Ferdowsi works for NASA and has awesome hair. Which was enough to get him invited to the 2012 State of the Union.