Question: Who sits next to the speaker of the house during the state of the union?
Disambiguated questions and answers: question: Who usually sits next to the speaker of the house during the state of the union?
Who sits next to the speaker of the house during the state of the union if the vice president is unavailable?
answer: Vice President
next highest-ranking member of the respective house
Natural Questions answer: Vice President (from the Wikipedia article "State of the Union")