Thoughts on the SOTU – Just what The Village ordered
It was a good enough speech. It was just what the beltway pundits and Washington elites, aka The Village, wanted to hear. This from James Galbraith, (tip to Dan Froomkin), sums it up very well.
Overall, this is a terrific thematic speech. It sets out important goals, for the most part in the right areas: research, technology, infrastructure, education, jobs. The priority for clean energy is clear (though if the word “conservation” is mentioned, I missed it.) It speaks broadly of health care cost control, not narrowly of cuts to Medicare. It appears to support, or at least does not contradict, the emerging bipartisan consensus that Social Security benefits should not be cut. The weasel-word “entitlements” does not appear. It lends a word of support to some of the nation’s most embattled public-sector employees – teachers. It is compassionate and sensible on immigrants and immigration. It defends the vital role of regulation in a market system. It does not waste many words on the deficit or the national debt or the fiscal commission.
Having set out these goals and priorities, there are practically no actual legislative proposals here. It’s not a governing speech. If the administration plans to make proposals to this Congress, it will have to do so later. If proposed, they will not be enacted. So this is a speech that is intended to put the Republicans on the rhetorical defensive, and perhaps to launch the 2012 campaign. No doubt, this is strategy.
The proposed “spending freeze” is bad policy. But it’s very hard to see how a freeze on overall domestic discretionary spending can be reconciled with an investment program. Which is the real policy? Possibly neither. We’ll see in the budget.
Other missing words: “unemployment,” “unemployment insurance,” “foreclosure crisis,” “poverty,” “financial fraud,” “prosecutions.” There’s nothing about bank credit. The victims of the economic crisis have become invisible, it would seem.
Sometimes a speech is remembered for what wasn’t said, not what was said. President Obama with this speech was trying to fix what the White House perceived as his biggest problem area in his first two years – bad PR. He was not trying to speak to the people that are hurting because of unemployment, foreclosure, poverty, etc… It was clear he was trying to fix a perception/PR problem with The Village. It was also notable for it’s lack of a call for sacrifice from those who have profited so much off our current economic system.
This statement is about right, Obama is looking more like Herbert Hoover every day.
Read the speech here.
Watch the speech here.
