I've always enjoyed watching these big annual speeches, regardless of who the president is. It's a unique opportunity for the president to attempt to set the tone for the year ahead. I remember Reagan being particularly good at this, as was Clinton. Bush Jr. had a couple of excellent post-9/11 speeches, when people badly needed to hear things were going to be OK.
I've already outlined my overall impression of Obama's first year, independent of his speech, so there's no need to go through that again. One of the bigger themes he seemed to pound on was that elected people have a job, and that's to govern, not get re-elected. He was mostly careful to place that responsibility on both parties, though his point to Republicans that voting no for the sake of your party affiliation is not leadership was particularly harsh. Sure, Democrats would do the same thing if the roles were reversed, but that's not justification, that's just the same old shit.
Horrified as they were, I'm glad he blasted the supreme court over their recent decision to overturn the law that says it's OK for corporations to fund political advertising against candidates. That makes the ability to buy candidates worse than ever. I would've liked to have seen McCain's reaction, as that was his bill. But aside from that, Obama's theme there was one of transparency, that elected folks need to get everything out there. He gave the example that White House visitors are all listed online, and that's a pretty good example. I would love to see every Congress Critter do that.
I'm glad he finally had the balls to say "don't ask, don't tell" is done. He should have done that on day one.
His other policy agenda points were really nothing we haven't hear before, though he obviously wants to make jobs the biggest priority. Trying to legislate jobs seems like a recipe for failure, since you have to implement the right combination of tax incentives, government programs and such, but you have to get Congress to do it and hope that the economy will make it work. I sure as hell wouldn't want to do that.
Overall, I think it was a pretty good speech. He's a hell of a great speaker. What bothers me of course is all of the stuffy old white guys with their arms folded every time they didn't agree. I don't know how that's good for them. Who wants to see that?
As I mentioned in that other post, it's the divisiveness that annoys me more than anything. It's not just politicians anymore, it's everyone. People are angry and they don't even know what they're angry about. There is always someone there to say, "[Current President] is ruining the country," but they can never tell you why. I think Bush was the worst president in my lifetime, but I don't think he was ruining the country, nor did I think it was his intention to make everything suck. I do think that his policy and tone, in the aggregate sense, had a tendency to cast a negative direction on our world, and there are bullet points I could point out. But even he had wins, and I can acknowledge those too. What's so fucking hard about that? Why are people so willing to be for or against, and nothing in between? That, to me, is where the failure of us as a nation comes in. Politics are treated like professional sports in terms of picking sides.
If the economic correction continues and stabilizes, as economists believe it will, certainly this president will have a good term by the time it's over. The question for me will still be if he can be the transformative force I hoped he'd be.
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