Thoughts On Obama's First State Of The Union

By Staff in News on Jan 28, 2010 3:00PM

Last night, President Obama delivered his first official State of the Union speech to a joint session of U.S. Congress. The President focused largely on the economy before moving on the social issues such as health care reform and promising to repeal the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. He also further addressed national security issues and partisanship within Congress. You can view the entire speech above and read the text here. Virginia governor Robert McDonnell delivered the GOP response which you can view here and read here.

Rather than rehash what the President said, Kevin and Aaron discussed the speech, what they each thought it means for Obama and the midterm elections, where they think the GOP stands, and what's next.

Let's your general overall feelings on the speech to start.
Kevin: I think he started strong. Economics and national security are what he won on and that's what he led with and it was tight. Very, very strong. People are nervous right now. They want to feel like there's leadership in Washington and those two issues speak to the core of that.
Aaron: two words: sass factory. overall, I agree here. He was strong I think throughout most of the speech, particularly the economy. I think he did a good job of taking some issues of partisanship and the divide between America to task.

Was he aggressive enough?
Kevin: I think he struck a nice balance between being confident, aggressive, and presidential. He was much more in campaign mode, I think, than a president might normally be, but that's where he needs to be. If this is a sign of what's to come, the lead up to the elections will be very interesting.
Aaron: On domestic issues, yes he was. I actually was impressed - and I'm not usually impressed by political speeches. He had more chutzpah than any of the Dems have had this past year. I also think he pulled off the populist track pretty well. Bush often tried to appear folksy and populist. I think Obama took a bit of a different track (not being folksy), but was down to earth, he had jokes - and they were decent jokes. It was the kind of thing that I think people needed to hear, something strong, something aggressive, but also something relateable.
Kevin: Definitely. I feel like he was, in part, channeling the best of Reagan. Reagan was in a similar place at his second State of the Union. I found this poll earlier showing where presidents were, poll-wise, during their terms. Clinton was the only one that consistently did well. I think that says a lot about the realities on the ground, and what history remembers of a president.
Aaron: I really didn't get Reagan here - I was thinking more Kennedy, actually.
Kevin: Reagan painted a portrait of America at its best. Kennedy did, too, but his America was an idealist America. Reagan's was idealistic, but it was rooted in folksy pragmatism. That's what Obama went for, the best of who we are.
Aaron: I think there were a lot of lines in that speech where he was shooting for that quotable "ask not what your country can do for you" or the Rooseveltian "the only thing we have to fear" line.

Was this a speech not only about policy about public perception?
Kevin: Definitely. I suspect that part of the reason we haven't seem a lot of Obama lately is because he's been huddling with his advisors like Plouffe and Axelrod
Aaron: I think this speech was much more about perception than anything else. There wasn't a ton in here that was actual policy. There was also a lot of the same kind of pie in the sky big claims we heard during the election season and the inauguration.
Kevin: This was a stump speech as much as an SOTU address.

Well let's get to policy that was addressed, like the economy.
Kevin: He said a lot of things that I think are right on.

The idea of giving money back to small businesses, the $30 billion from Wall Street?
Kevin: His economic policy has been stalled lately. That's something that he'll need going forward. Those are hard policies to obstruct. The challenge is to make sure he can knuckle down on the GOP for those wins.
Aaron: I think, though, that's the same rhetoric everyone says. You even saw that in the Republican response, and you see that quite often. Everyone believes that we need to give money back to small businesses. No Republican will disagree with that.
Kevin: The banks have rushed to pay that money back.
Aaron: I actually want to fact check that bank statement, about paying the money back, because i don't believe they've been that good about it.
Kevin: Well, I'm sure we'll see that in the next 24 hours. But there is a lot of outrage about Wall Street, still, and focusing on Main Street is a winner. He's got to bring the fight to the GOP, though, if he wants to be successful. It's a leadership issue as much as it's a political one and he's got to enforce some party discipline. He alluded to that with the line about running for the hills.
Aaron: I think what is interesting though, is that he's actually talking about giving the money that has been returned to the American people in the form of workable initiatives. Particularly education. I think the big winner here in the long haul is going to be investing in research and development and getting people a decent education. You can have a million new small businesses, but what are they making? Who are they selling to? Where are they getting their ideas?
Kevin: When he addressed trade and investment, he did a good job drawing the parallels with Asia and Europe. People are nervous about the future of the nation right now.
Aaron: The question here, I think, is do we need another new bunch of retail outlets and bars, or do we need to start making things again?
Kevin: I think he addressed that. He talked about manufacturing: solar power, materials, etc. That wasn't an economic policy based on consumer spending.
Aaron: Right, but we all know that's a small drop in the bucket. He talked about the need to export, but at present, what could we be exporting? The one thing that I am happy to hear was that he'd at least try to address that, particularly in taking corporations to task.
Kevin: He's already cracking down on unfair trade practices, so there is still plenty that we can be exporting.
Aaron: In regards to outsourcing, that, I think, is huge. And that's where we'll find a lot of the GOP ire, especially in the rebuttal about regulation. The reality is, we need regulation to prevent the shipping of American jobs overseas.

"And to encourage these and other businesses to stay within our borders, it's time to finally slash the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas and give those tax breaks to companies that create jobs in the United States of America."

Kevin: What I think will be interesting is how much support he can get on these things but at the end of the day, he talked about what turns his base on. If he ramps up his political apparatus and pushes the Dems to be in line with him, he's got a shot at salvaging the midterm elections.

How about Health Care? The touchy subject that he seemed to very carefully navigate?
Kevin: He did a good job with it and placing it in the middle of the speech was a good move, I thought. All too often, SOTU addresses are a laundry list of what we want. Remember when Bush was taking us to Mars? What happened to that? This wasn't a laundry list, though. It was a set of legislative priorities that all seem possible, if Congress can get its act together. He did a good job putting the mess we're in now in perspective, that its decades of neglect, not just his term's spending. Overall, I feel good after this speech.
Aaron: Maybe, but people need to remember that it takes more than a year for policies to begin working. I'm not as optimistic as you, Kevin, but that's because I think he did a piss poor job at foreign policy here.

So what about foreign policy?
Kevin: I'm down with a strong national security. The GOP response was all "Terror Terror! Boo! Boo!" He talked in broad terms about national security. Again, it's a leadership issue. That's been a big problem in the last decade: a lack of leadership and a coherent policy on national defense and security.
Aaron: Oh I think we've had plenty of leadership on that issue and i think that's one worth bringing up here
Kevin: But that's just it; we haven't had leadership.
Aaron: The spending freeze does not include defense spending, which is what we spend the majority of our budget on.
Kevin: We've had a cowboy mentality, without a comprehensive strategy
Aaron: We still have that cowboy mentality except now we just use prettier words to describe it.
Kevin: I really don't think Obama's national security strategy is unilateral. Look at how we've handled Iran, for example.
Aaron: We're still imprisoning people without charges and trial, we're still bombing civilians, we're still talking about war with Iran.
Kevin: The previous administration would have just manhandled them in the name of American supremacy. Obama has taken a more diplomatic approach.
Aaron: In words, but not actions.

Was his hand forced by the Christmas Day crotch bomb attempt?
Aaron: I don't think so at all. I think people forget the past all too quickly. In the 70's, we had plenty of airplane hijackings and bombings by terrorists and we dealt with them differently. We didn't just lob bombs out of unmanned drones at anything with a Middle Eastern sounding name.
Kevin: The GOP blocked his TSA appointment because he supported unionization of TSA workers. Those petty squabbles are what the GOP deals in. They don't have a comprehensive plan for anything, so they pick ugly partisan fights over minutiae. When Obama deals in broad terms and comprehensive plans, he wins the day; when he gets drawn into these petty squabbles, he loses. The American people want leadership. Leadership isn't arguing about blocked judicial appointments, it's making plans to move forward and pushing them. Hard.
Aaron: But the problem here is that we need more than just leadership and pretty words. We need someone who is going to actually stand behind what he says he's going to do. Last year we were closing Gitmo, this year it's still open and we're preparing to move it to American soil and continuing its policies, but I'd like to actually see action at some point.
Kevin: We've let a lot of those people go and the really bad ones, we're keeping under arrest.
Aaron: Well, the really bad ones and the ones where we have no evidence other than evidence conjured under torture. Which we're still practicing.
Kevin: Obama can't wave a magic wand and fix a decade of problems.

What about his statements on partisanship, his call to the Dems and Republicans regarding majorities/super-majorities, etc.?
Kevin: He did a good job putting it on both groups to get their act together. The challenge now is to follow-through. That's what will make or break his presidency.
Aaron: I think it was spot on. I think both parties need to be called on their shit. I think he summed it up when he said, "We cannot wage a perpetual campaign where the only goal is to see who can get the most embarrassing headlines about their opponent - a belief that if you lose, I win." I think that points out the problem with partisanship in America brilliantly
Kevin: Agreed, but he really needs to follow through on that. Part of the problem is, he needs to get out of the White House. When was the last time we saw him? Last year? It's not enough, he needs to be out in the states, talking to people. He has the power to set the tone so it's not win/lose but moving forward. That's hard, and I don't envy the position.
Aaron: I think for all the populist rhetoric, we should actually start seeing some populist action.
Kevin: That was what made Roosevelt Roosevelt. He couldn't have won the New Deal etc without the fireside chats. Obama can do the same, in all of the downtrodden towns he mentioned today because, at the end of the day, that's where the votes will come from and those are the folks that talk to their congressmen. Right now, the only voice in a congressional office is pissed off Tea Partiers. There are other people that are pissed off, too. They need a conduit for their anger; he can channel that, but not from the White House.

So where does he go from here? This speech seemed very much an attempt to re-harness that optimism he had last year - but with the added caveat that change takes time and is tough. Did he succeed?
Kevin: He succeeds only if he follows through. The people that elected him are smart and politically engaged and they want to be active.
Aaron: Right, but he needs to get back to actually addressing the base.
Kevin: He's neglected those people up until now. If this speech is just that - a speech - he loses. Badly. He's got to keep the focus on economics and national security
Aaron: He needs to totally reform how we think about national security, but that's not going to happen.
Kevin: He has the opportunity through immigration reform, import/export policy, green technology, etc. National security isn't just searching underwear and shoes, it's technology and nukes.

How about the spending freeze?
Kevin: It's a tricky issue. He said in the campaign that it was a hatchet when the budget needs a scalpel. He alluded to that tonight.
Aaron: We're not cutting spending from anything meaningful. What are we going to cut, exactly? I do like the idea of keeping accountability and transparency to earmarks. That's important. but when you exclude the largest portions of the budget (including medicare, etc), what's left? More than 50% of the pie is untouchable. So now those programs that are underfunded will be more underfunded. You can almost use Chicago as a microcosm here. We're cutting the fireworks display to save a million bucks, but we waste tens of millions on other projects.
Kevin: Yeah, I was thinking about Chicago as an example for the nation through this speech. The fireworks are a great example. You can't balance the budget by turning the heat down four degrees in federal buildings. We have to figure out how to manage better and ultimately, shrink the size of government. The federal government is too big.
Aaron: You can balance the budget if you turn down the heat in those buildings that aren't being used.
Kevin: That's just it: we need to get rid of some of these buildings and we can only do that by cutting some of these agencies. Chicago is a great example. We have all kinds of agencies in Chicago that are obsolete like the Bureau of Electricity. Bad top-heavy management.
Aaron: Why save a few million by cutting a social program, which people in dire economic straits need, when you can save a few billion by not buying planes no one is going to use (the F22)?
Kevin: I don't think it's an either/or situation. We can do both. I'm not convinced that all of these social programs are worthwhile.
Aaron: I think anything that helps poor people is worthwhile. Those are the folks that all this economic recovery is supposed to save, isn't it? Or are we supposed to let Wal-mart come to the rescue with minimum wage jobs?

What did you think of the GOP response?
Kevin: It seemed like there wasn't much for them to say. I thought it was telling. I hope Obama's people noticed that. Issues win races; if they have no issues, they don't win. He needs to corner them on that.
Aaron: It wasn't much of a response - it was telling and it was decidedly partisan: "We agree with what the president said on some things, but because he said it, we need to disagree on minutiae." They win points for the most ridiculous nod to young people and technology with the Facebook/Twitter shout out.
Kevin: The fact that it was in the VA statehouse, with a governor that was sworn in 11 days ago, says a lot as does the fact that no Democrats were invited until 1:40 p.m. today.
Aaron: The only person quoted was Scott Brown (Senator from Massachusetts) who was just elected.

The GOP seemed subdued tonight, no booing, no repeat of the "You Lie" incident. Some of their responses - even on a few issues they agreed on - were tepid.
Aaron: There was some eye rolling and sassy looks - but every SOTU has that.
Kevin: Obama needs to get down and be brass knuckled about it, he just needs to peel a few away to win something. The super-majority issue is a big one right now. People are upset about that, too.
Aaron: What, that nothing can get done even with a super majority?
Kevin: Yes. It's counter to the Constitution, and the intentions of the Founding Fathers.
Aaron: That's telling about how much power the right actually holds - at least in the propaganda department.

Final thoughts?
Kevin: He needs to two a few things: use the bully pulpit (campaign like he did against Hillary) to keep his base pumped and engaged and drop the hammer on the Democrats. They're running for the hills, and that's unacceptable. Get out of the White House and get with the people.
Aaron: It was a good speech, it was a populist speech - it was a fiery speech. That's what America needed to hear right now. But it was just words. What he needs to do is follow through. If he really means we're going to be out of Iraq, then we need to be out of Iraq when he says we will be. If he means putting an end to Don't Ask, Don't Tell, then we need to do that. If America is going to get working again, then we need to start actually working again. I agree with Kevin, he does need to drop the hammer on his party - they can't balk every time some Tea Party supporter cries wolf. He needs to be putting out energy, towards his party and towards the people and keep them energized into working towards positive goals and ends, rather than just complaining or tucking their tails and running when someone disagrees.