For those of you who missed the president's State of the
Union message, let me sum it up for you: Our enemies in the Middle East are
dead or on the run. Our new enemies are Wall Street, big oil, and Congressional
obstructionism. We can be the America of 1945 again if we restore fairness to
our society.
Ok, that's a little cynical. But in short strokes, that's
it. We want to be good old America, the place where the little guy has a chance
and no one wants to mess with Uncle Sam. Oh and we love the military. Oh and
Osama bin Laden is still dead.
That said, it was a pretty good speech as these things go,
had a few interesting ideas in it, a few sound if retread notions masquerading
as interesting ideas, and it was well delivered.
Grading it, we'd have to conclude the following:
-
Compared to the paintball game that the GOP
primary debates have become, this was Churchillian in its oratory and
Jeffersonian in its vision. If we were grading on the curve therefore, against
the body politic as a whole intellectual wasteland that it is, the speech gets
10 out of 10, an A.
-
Compared to the usual State of the Union
address, speeches that drone on, offer little in the way of new ideas, sometimes
stirred up by a line or a notion or a moving moment or a controversy, this was
not bad. The speech was pretty good, the delivery was pretty good, the core
idea of asserting that government has a role to play in supporting America's
recovery and ensuring our strength was sound, and there was a lovely moment of
the president hugging Gabby Giffords that was the highlight of the evening. By
this metric, the speech gets an 88, a solid B.
-
Compared to the Obama addresses of the past, his
campaign triumphs and the hopes many had for the president, this was still a
bit of a let-down. The idea that it included a hard look at the root causes of
the mortgage crisis four years after that crisis began sure felt like closing
the barn door after the horse got out. It's notable that the president began
and ending with national security success stories as few would have predicted
that three years ago. It's good he took credit for his export successes, silly
that he re-announced a trade enforcement operation that has been announced and formed
periodically in the past, and kind of poignant that he adopted the
"indispensable nation" language of the Clinton years. Indeed, as Obama speeches
go, this was a pretty good homage to Clinton, or as they say in hip-hop, it
include a lot of "sampling" of Bubba's Greatest Hits. For reasons like this, you
could easily give the speech a 75 or a C.
-
In terms of what is going to actually happen
based on this speech -- even in terms of the perfectly good ideas it contained
like more equitable taxation, government streamlining, focusing on harnessing
American energy in a responsible, efficiency-focused way, making American more
attractive to investors, focusing on creating jobs at home -- we are,
unfortunately, going to have to give it a D. Because this hopeless Congress,
frozen in the dark amber of its own bile, will do precious little and no one expects
any more, including the president which makes the whole thing a painful
charade.
So, there you go. Pick the grade you like the most, ignore
the others, and move on. Because these things matter little, except in political
terms and even then not much because no one is going to remember January come
November.
Having said all that, let me add one more thing. You may have
heard that I am graduating from blogging to being the CEO and Editor-at-Large
of Foreign Policy. What this means among other things is that I will no longer
be blogging daily. (Pause to allow you all to get a hanky and daub your eyes.) Instead,
I'll be writing a Monday web-column (like a blog, only crunchy) and a regular
back-page column in FP, the magazine. Oh sure, I'll also tweet…and I suppose
when I can't help myself I'll throw in a blog every so often. So, I'll still be
around, still spouting off -- but doing so slightly less frequently -- allowing you
all the more time to read better writers and me a little more time to think
about what I write (which wouldn't hurt.) Thanks for following the blog and
please look out for the column, beginning week after next.
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