I have paid attention to more than 20 Presidential State Of The Union Addresses - delivered by the last 5 Presidents. They never left me satisfied, even the last year's Obama's speech.
I have to admit that this one was completely different. It was mostly with the economy in mind, promising the emphasis on the job creation and making America competitive on the World Market again. Obama even quoted the "deliverables" resulting from the on-going talks with the China and Korea - creating hundreds of thousand jobs in the US. He promised doubling of the national export by 2014. There was a good stress on the clean energy promising that 85% of the US produced energy by 2035 will come from the Clean Energy (of course it leaves the question "how clean is clean energy" if we talk about the nuclear power plans or the energy coming from burning of fossil fuels - "clean coal" and gas). He also concentrated on necessity of saving the budget. 5 Year Freeze on all Discretionary Domestic spending is a good start - followed by restructuring the current programs. At the same time he promised prioritizing higher education to produce more technologically advanced work force. There was a "Sputnik moment" mentioned and a "fast train" to the future - and Coast to Coast.
Some pundits criticized it afterwords for being too general, and not delivering any solutions. Some others for sending some contradictory messages (spending freeze - education and infrastructure expansion, etc).
Health reform which is the sore in the eye of the Republicans was on a table for "re sculpting" - "let's fix what needs to be fixed and let's move forward" - said Obama. America suffers the highest in the World Corporate Tax, at the same time having loopholes allowing many (most) to pay close to nothing. It's on a target list along with the simplifying of the tax code in general.
These were the things we almost always hear on such occasions, however most of the times not as convincingly as today.
What we almost never heard in such a decisive way is the promise of restructuring of the Government, dismantling many redundant agencies and services, saving funds as well as increasing the efficiency of such services several times. As stated by the President such a restructuring was overdue since the "B&W TV era". This kind of a promise along with the rejecting of all of the earmarks in all the future bills - besides being a very good idea must have looked very attractive even to the Republicans.
I was waiting impatiently to hear how was going to be mentioned and how was offered to be solved the issue of 2 Wars inherited from the former administration. According to the President the Iraq War is ended and even though slowly, the stabilization becomes more pronounced, and the day the last American soldier returns home is in the near future. The same was told about American involvement in the Afghan conflict - with the shift of responsibilities to the Locals, Pakistan and other allies, it makes the talk about return of our personnel also possible. It's about time. Also, the price tag of these wars so far is more than $3 Trillion of the money we didn't have at the first place (ref-a). When our involvement in these unpopular activities is limited or ended - then and only then we can start talking about getting out of debt.
Knowing the complexity of the political and economical climate in the last months (enhanced by the result of the November elections) I have no doubt that the President Obama, preparing to deliver the State of The Union address in January 2011, faced probably the toughest task out of all 5 Presidents whom I had a chance to observe. And yet the delivered 'product' played well the tune of hope. A real hope, and not a fairy tale. Lots of promises, but the same time making the impression that the fulfillment is withing the reach.
So, when the President finally pronounced the usual "...and the State of Our Union is strong" - it actually didn't sound like a cliche.
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It leaves us with two responses to the President's Speech - one by the legitimate Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, and the other by a Tea Party spokesperson Rep. Michelle Bachmann.
As much as Ryan's response was quite predictably attacking the Policy of the President, and promising the fight for reducing of the size and the influence of the Federal Government on both business as well as State Governments - it wasn't too confrontational. It's tone offered some hope for negotiations, and the reasoning. Ryan seemed to understand that the situation in which our economy is right now is the result of action of a few presidents before Obama (I would insist on blaming only the previous one) .
This, by itself was one of the biggest differences between his response and the one delivered by Michelle Bachmann. The latter one immersed herself in a cloud of condemning-Obama-and-all-the-Democrats rhetoric. She didn't have any problem with putting a blame only on the current administration for the effects of Bush presidency, concentrating herself on how the economy (and the job market) was 'crashed' by the Obama's policy in the first 2 years of current Presidency. Although surprisingly she stayed away from total "misfiring" of the data (bending it nevertheless to prove her agenda), however couldn't help herself making a factually incorrect reference about the American attack on Iwo Jima, claiming that American GI-s won that battle "against all the odds". Well, however difficult and bloody (resulting in a great number of casualties) this episode of the War on the Pacific was, the ODDS weren't against us. It was already the March of 1945. Michelle Bachman and her writers have a very baffling tendency of writing the fictional short stories - vaguely connected to the reality.
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ref-a: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/03/AR2010090302200.html
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