State of the Union
Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 10:16AM One narrative of the Obama political career is clear: he knows how to take a shot and come back stronger. Last night was no exception.
Even the most strident Obama supporter would admit that the first year has been tough, and quite frankly, some of it has been out of his control. As much as the Republicans hate to hear it, the reality is this guy inherited a disaster. Imagine being sixteen and your parents give you a car, except it is stuck in a ditch, missing two tires, with an engine that didn't work and out of gas. In the GOP world, that kid would be a failure if the car wasn't driving in the Daytona 500 the next day.
That being said, the administration has had their bumps and at times, did the one thing that would have been the cardinal crime during the campaign: they lost control of their own message. Its not that surprising, as most President's struggle initially to transition to the challenging of governing. Plus this President suffered from unrealistic expectations. And to their credit, the GOP are masters at being in the minority.
But last night, the President took it all back, outlining a clear and optimistic vision for moving America forward---and moreover, challenged every patriotic American to sign up, saying that "Americans deserve a government that matches their decency." Amen, Mr. President.
Kennedy had his man on the moon moment, so did Reagan when he commanded the Soviets to tear down the wall. Last night, our President challenged America not to quit, to put partisanship aside and work together to modernize our economy and workforce, and most importantly, rise to the occasion and grab firmly the mantle of being the world's greatest country---and never let go. That is the challenge of this generation. Our only choice is to embrace it.
Mr. President, count me in.
Reader Comments (2)
The biggest mistake the President Obama made was mistaking the general good will of many conservatives to make this country be the best it can be no matter who does it, with the already disgraced Conservative and Republican leadership that can only make their own failures of ideology and character palatable by making sure that the Democratic comparison is as awful as possible.
Built into this was the assumption that the media would spin the reality to their favor but that they would not be able to replace it with totally made up reality altogether. Both ideas were nearly fatal, and even inside the Government and Military, Cheney's moles have been very busy undermining any progressive agenda and what support Obama might have gotten from actual change, if he were not himself ambivalent about some of those changes needed himself.
Now Obama may have gotten the idea that he will have to make Republican subversion of even modest improvement glaring and impossible to hide, but I don't think that the depths of the corruption of the system has yet dawned on even those men of honor who are deeply involved throughout the government much less the narrow circle around the President.
He does the soaring rhetoric very well. Which is what you want the fellow playing that position to be able to do, no question.
But the vital question of what this bully-pulpiteering and executive power-wielding will ultimately amount to can be metaphorically very usefully framed, seems to me, from one of the more toxic bits of conservative catnip he tossed out last night:
If the 'Obama generation' is to shine with a nuclear-furnace brilliance--wonderful. Beats the stuffing out of the alternative. But the question remains: who gets the "waste" dumped in their backyards? It's safe to say all the "win-win" political veins have largely all been mined (and yielded a long, unimpressive stretch of dry holes).
And so when we get to this luminescent "good part"...who loses? Who suffers what, suffers when and suffers how? What cohort of the nation gets to live in the 'cancer alley' of this new political landscape?
Seems to me the folks who've been bearing the overwhelming brunt of things so far have been (formerly known as) working people and this vague, dying thing that gets called 'the middle class' in this country. Until that changes, or is at least addressed in some serious, concrete way--some way that doesn't rest on an unconvincing pretense that 'everybody wins'--I'm really not all that impressed with the oratory.