State of the Union Wrap-up

02/01/11

On the right, we have the usual charges of co-opted ideas, platitudes, and big spending, and on the left there are gripes that he gave in to Republican demands, touted right wing ideas, and didn't speak out about issues like gun control, but neither side put very much energy into it. The consensus opinion seems to be that Obama remains a commanding public speaker but that the speech itself was a ho-hum middle of the road attempt at bipartisanship that didn't ruffle any feathers and didn't offer any specifics.

I disagree.

For starters, I'm the only Democrat I know that doesn't think the President is a particularly good public speaker. He has a habit of inserting pauses mid sentence that break up his cadence in a way that I find irritating and his jokes frequently fall flat. It's only in comparison to eight years of President Bush that Obama seems polished at the podium.

It's true that last week's speech took a centrist approach with ideas popular on the left and on the right. Liberals continue to hold out hope that Obama will be the president they want rather than the centrist candidate that he was while conservatives continue to try and paint him as a leftist rather than accept that he was never a radical. For all the noise coming from the margins, this is a country of moderates and Obama spent the bulk of his speech laying out a centrist agenda. It wasn't controversial so the opinion makers and pundits have panned it.

It's also true that the speech was light on specifics, but this is another hallmark of Obama's vision of the role of the President. He has consistently used the presidency to lay out agendas while asking the legislative branch to work out the specifics. This approach more closely tracks with the historical version of the executive branch but contrasts sharply with the vision of the presidency advanced by the last man to hold the office.

State of the Union speeches are one of the most widely covered political events and one of the most quickly forgotten. The most memorable and most quoted speeches in our political history have come on other occasions, and as Abraham Lincoln said in perhaps the most famous presidential speech, the Gettysburg Address, ''The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here...'' But the State of the Union is still important in setting out a vision and an agenda, and even after the words have faded from our collective consciousness, we would do well to take note of one thing.

The rules of the game have changed. That was a seminal moment in Obama's speech. There has never been a more compelling case made by any president for innovation in our job market. Gone are the days of careers starting in the mail room or the factory floor that lead to a lifetime of job security and the hope of continued advancement. Companies today do more with fewer people and manufacturing is a function of technology, not labor. We cannot turn back the clock and hope to compete in a global economy. If the United States is going to retain its dominance in the 21^st century, then we need a plan for a 21^st century infrastructure, including education, transportation and information flow. What Obama did in his State of the Union that will reverberate throughout the next two years of his presidency and the 2012 elections is paint the Democrats as the party of the optimistic future, expanding on American exceptionalism. It's worth noting that both responses, the official Republican response given by Congressman Paul Ryan and the Tea Party response delivered by Congresswoman Michelle Bachman, looked to the past with emphasis on old economy jobs.