My expectation going into last night’s State of the Union address was that the President would be bold and combative in tone, but timid and capitulatory in substance. In other words, that he would renew his call for victory on major issues like climate change and health care, but dramatically redefine what victory means in those areas.
With those skeptical expectations in mind, I was pleased with the President’s address. On policy, there wasn’t much in the way of new announcements, good or bad. While the spending freeze is a political stunt with disastrous policy consequences (as people far smarter than myself and some guy named Barack Obama have pointed out), we knew it was coming for a few days. And aside from that, there wasn’t the kind of movement to the right that I had feared. President Obama seemed to be relaunching, rather than abandoning, the major goals he set for himself when he took office.
The best parts of the speech were those when the President called out the irresponsibility and obtructionism of Republicans. My favorite passage was:
And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town — a supermajority — then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions. So let’s show the American people that we can do it together.
For the past year, the Administration and the Democratic leadership has been trying pass major initiatives by playing along with the arcane rules of the Senate and the disgraceful manipulation of those by the Republican leadership. They have dutifully tried to cobble together 60 votes on every bill and waited patiently as important posts remain unfilled due to anonymous holds and demands for cloture. Last night, the President finally called out this non-sense in the highest profile forum available to him.
I’m not sure anything will change after last night’s speech. I certainly don’t expect Mitch McConnell to be shamed by the President’s words and actually allow the country to be governed. But it was a smart and necessary move by the President, and probably the best speech he could have given under the circumstances. The country and progressives needed to be reassured that the President remains committed to real change on big issues, while Republicans need to be forced to at least publicly defend their scorched earth approach to legislating.
-AR
You called it AR.