UWG political science professor Paul Rutledge offers his opinions on President Barack Obama's State of the Union address:
I think President Obama did his best to connect with the American people in several ways. First, he really stressed jobs and programs such as cutting student loan payments and expanding the child tax credit. He was very forthright and honest, taking responsibility to some extent for "Change we can believe in" not coming fast enough. To his credit, I think he took too much of the blame for this, simply because the type of change he is referring to, fixing an economic disaster, will take much longer than one year. He was willing to call out his own party to continue to govern as the majority and not "run for the hills". He called upon the Republicans to do more than just say no, and invited them to the table with serious proposals. This was part of an effort I think to distance himself a bit from Washington, a typical political strategy that cannot hurt on main street. I think all of these things have a chance to restore some of the public confidence in his administration, although what seemed to be a mea culpa for not delivering fast enough really could go either way. Might be a Republican soundbyte for 2010?
There were a few things that I found odd. In a speech where he is attempting to draw Republicans to the table, rise above the partisan bickering that is currently crippling our nation, and gain the faith of the American people that he is still working to change Washington, he reverted in part to pointing fingers. I found his "setting the record straight" on several occasions to be contradictory to his other efforts throughout the speech mentioned above. This is especially true of his discussions relating to the previous eight years. Blaming President Bush, even though everything he said he inherited is based in fact, will not gain him support from Republicans or go far towards convincing the American people he is trying to change things. This is even more true when at another point in the speech, he said (and I paraphrase here), "We have tried the Republican policies (after listing several party platform items), it didn't work." Who knows if the public will pick up on such contradictions, but if so, it certainly will make what was strategically a very important speech less effective than it could have otherwise been.
I think overall the State of the Union was very effective. President Obama delivered precisely what he needed to at this stage in his presidency.
Additionally, I thought his greatest strength may have been the last few moments of the speech. He was very captivating and energetic, something that is traditionally a strong point for Obama, and something that connects with the public very effectively.
Blaming Bush, for whom I did not vote, is getting old especially since the Congress was Democratic for the last few years of the Bush administration. I am an Independent that was not won over by Obama's slick teleprompter reading. He has not done key things he promised during his campaign. He promised transparency, bipartisanship and C-Span. We see how that's played out. After Americans started speaking out after he said passage of stimulus packages and bailouts were urgent so we didn't get a chance to know what was in them until after the fact, we started wanting to know and to demand of our elected officials and therefore HC didn't get shoved through before the August recess as Obama urgently wanted. Then, Pelosi took the Democrats behind closed doors and changed the locks. Bipartisanship and C-Span? Then, when the Senate bill passed in the Senate, Pelosi and Reid met behind closed doors until Scott Brown was elected in MA which prompted a thought they might pass it through reconciliation promising the House they'd add the parts they wanted after the bill became law. Obama also recently "saw" how one part of the first stimulus package was spent and he announced it wouldn't happen again. He had promised a line by line veto of all pork projects, obviously didn't see the show on the Top 100 worst pork projects that aired six months ago and were shameful in the unnecessariness of all of them. What happened to his promise of no pork? I have a BS in Sociology from UWG under the department chair of Ted Simons and I can see the heading toward Communism instead of Socialism - From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. I will chose who I will help according to my ability, I will not have it mandated. Wasn't Van Jones a wake-up call to the people? Honestly, wasn't Rev Wright a wake-up call to the people?
ReplyDelete