Thursday, January 28, 2010
Obama's Big Gamble
On the contrary, this State of the Union was actually a rather reality-based speech. It's just that Obama decided to toss aside all the usual conventions for such speeches and decided to focus on a reality different than the one most journalists and commentators expected him to focus on.
Note how the usual formulation of "the state of our union is [blank]" was truncated to "our union is strong." For a gifted speaker like Obama who tends to hew to traditional rhetorical convention, this departure was strange -- unless it was particularly designed to send a different message than usual.
indeed, the strangeness continued -- the evidence of which could be gleaned by what was included and excluded in the speech.
To go in reverse order, for the first time I believe since Reagan initiated the practice, there was no shout-out to the special guests in the president's box. The hero cops from the Ft. Hood shooting were reportedly up in the gallery, yet no explicit mention of them? Odd.
Odder still was the specific avoidance of specificity. By that, I mean the president made pointed reference to examples of companies and individuals helped by the stimulus -- but gave no names.
He mentioned a young boy who sent money to the White House to help Haitian relief -- yet didn't identity him by name. It would be easy to sat that he omitted these specifics to deter fact-checkers, but in the Internet Age, that sort of scrutiny isn't going to be easily evaded. So, why leave out the names?
Meanwhile, what WAS in the speech? Sure, the usual listing of policy proposals, but a lengthy defense of decisions made and policies adopted last year made up the bulk of the first half of the address: The impact of the "Recovery Act", AKA "the stimulus," was the focus.
As such, this was one of the most overtly political SOTU speeches in some time. But perhaps this is actually where the country is -- that actually is the reality that Barack Obama sees.
And so, he has decided to double down on the political -- rather than economic or security -- reality of the moment.
Consider, one conservative last night declared that he was surprised that Obama displayed none of the contrition of Bill Clinton's 1995 "the era of big government is over" SOTU. Another analyst made a similar point.
Huh!!! Really?
Which is why something Obama included in the speech was so off-putting (from a traditional SOTU perspective):
To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve some problems, not run for the hills. And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that sixty votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions. So let’s show the American people that we can do it together.I didn't have time to pour through all SOTUs given, but I can't remember when a POTUS explicitly reminded his side of the size of its majority and the other side the price that comes with asserting that 60 votes are necessary for passage of major bills.
He was, at that moment warning that Democrats risked being labeled cowards and Republicans obstructionists if his agenda wasn't pushed through. Was that serious ass-covering ("If this all falls apart, it's your fault, not mine!")? Maybe, but it's not a completely unfair reading of the current political reality.
Ronald Reagan got his tax cuts through a Democratic House and GOP Senate. George W. Bush -- after losing the popular vote in 2000 -- got tax cuts and No Child Left Behind through a split Senate. Even after the Jeffords flip gave Democrats the majority, the hated-by-Dems Ted
Olson was approved as Bush's solicitor general.
The point here is that with much smaller margins, Republican presidents get things done -- usually because Republicans support the individual in the White House.
Unfair or not, Barack Obama is daring Democrats to walk away from him on health care -- now that each chamber has passed a bill. A party legislative dream of decades is tantalizingly close. November may prove that Massachusetts was the warning sign that Republicans and many independents believe it to be. But Obama has put down the gauntlet to declare that he deserves to have half his first term play out before the post-mortems of his presidency are carved in stone -- regardless of how unpopular health care is at this moment.
In short, Obama is faced with the perpetual tug in politics -- does an elected leader stick to the inner compass or does he follow what the polls (and one special election) tell him?
Obama seems willing to bet his congressional majority on the former. That's why this was a give-no-inch political speech.
But in the larger picture, we'll see, come November, if the overall bet Barack Obama made Wednesday night was a smart or stunningly stupid one. In the interim, it's going to be bumpy ride, because Obama declared the state of our politics to be fractious and harsh -- and
he's willing to declare it a war zone.
Labels: Barack Obama, State of the Union
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
The Competence Factor
Labels: Barack Obama, State of the Union
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Final Crisis (Right.)
The word "crisis" appeared seven times in President Obama's address to the nation. And, as nearly everyone knows, the Chinese character for "crisis" is the combination of two others -- "danger" and "opportunity."
Obama used those two aspects of the word to maximum effect. Boy, did he ever.
The danger in the current circumstances is rather obvious. However, cognizant of some criticism that his recent statements could be seen as "talking down the economy," Obama pulled back on the cataclysmic rhetoric.
But he is nonetheless seizing the opportunity. His program isn't just another "new age"-type middling attempt to help the country "get back on its feet" economically in the short term. Instead, he's outlining a vision of government that is either bold or radical, depending on one's perspective. Whether it is able to fulfill all of its aims and promises, however, remains to be seen.
What isn't questionable is that this is a darn expensive proposition.
One thing that need not really be said, Barack Obama can give a good performance. He commands whatever stage he takes. The House chamber was alive Monday night. Though often filled with the usual partisan standing ovations, there was remarkably little of the bitterness that has characterized State of the Union-type addresses of recent years. The contempt that Republicans had for Bill Clinton or Democrats had for George W. Bush was remarkably absent -- even though Obama's program is as ideologically transformative as anything.
In this very narrow way, perhaps it is too soon to say that the president's attempt at bipartisanship is dead. There was more of a sense of collegiality between Republican and Democrat than in previous years.
During the '90s, Bill Clinton used the mantra "Medicaid, Medicare, education, environment" as the programmatic bulwark to block Republican plans to overhaul the budget. Obama has gone the opposite route: Energy, health care and education are the magic words with which Obama plans to bring a long-term "change" to the nation. And, it won't be cheap.
The word "invest" (or some variation thereof) appears 13 times. By this word, Obama means "spend": Spend money on housing (already proposed in the foreclosure plan). Spend money on different levels of education. The latest universality goal for government now appears to be college.
We have made college affordable for nearly seven million more students. And we have provided the resources necessary to prevent painful cuts and teacher layoffs that would set back our children's progress.
Seven million more going to college -- because it is as evidently important for as many Americans as possible to have college degrees. As important as it is to maximize the number of Americans owning their own home? Hmmm...what could possibly go wrong?
Speaking of universality, we will also be investing in health care -- with the ultimate goal of some form of universal coverage. Again, given what the drive for universal home ownership has given us, what could possibly go wrong?
And, of course, "investing" in energy -- preferably "green" energy that weens the country away from oil-dependence and also battles global warming.
Yet, with all of this investment, we are also supposed to believe that the deficit can be halved within three years (by the end of Obama's first term) -- in order to protect our children's future (in essence, another "investment"):
And that is the responsibility to ensure that we do not pass on to them a debt they cannot pay. With the deficit we inherited, the cost of the crisis we face, and the long-term challenges we must meet, it has never been more important to ensure that as our economy recovers, we do what it takes to bring this deficit down.
Yet, the only enhanced revenue (beyond that which is currently law) he expects to have comes from, 1) allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire and, 2) drawing down forces from Iraq. Keep in mind that the latter of those two options is, of course, dependent on the circumstances -- as is the expanded deployment into Afghanistan.
It is quite easy to be seduced by President Obama's soaring rhetoric. He is a confident man trying to rally a nation to his ideas. But, while "hope" made for a great campaign slogan, it can't make money appear out of nowhere. Obama says that "the day of reckoning" is here.
Labels: Barack Obama, State of the Union
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
And Iran, Iran So Far Away ...
"Overture, Curtain, Lights! This is it, Tonight's the Night ... "
The State of the Union, that is. That constitutionally required bit of Presidential summation which gives the nation's Chief Executive Officer a bully pulpit for roughly an hour. Then, thanks to "Equal Time," we are treated to a trailer of coming distractions from the opposing party. The subtopic to watch out for is whether or not the President will show any signs of contrition in the wake of the Election "thumping"; Or, will this be the launching pad for yet another expansion of the Global War on Terror? ("G.W.O.T." is not exactly the most awe-inspiring acronym that the Federal Bureau of Cool Operation Names has ever thunk up)
As an aside, are any of the current glue factory rejects in the Presidential Horse Race able to look past their massive egos and remember what started all this in the first place? Or, have we become so forgetful as a nation that crafting useful national security policies takes a backseat to what is still, regardless of how one feels about the Son of a Bush at Pennsylvania Avenue, a real threat?
Bonus points if, upon reading the headline pun, you immediately conjured up Retro Record Thots.
UPDATE: Kudos to EdMcGon for the BB Theme correction. I never could get that thing right. I thought the first words were "Oh, Monsieur ... " until I was 10-years-old. Guess I had Bugs and Daffy confused with Maurice Chevalier ...
Labels: Global War on Terror, Iran, September 11, State of the Union
