Year of decision: Obama's address sets up his re-election hopes
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After three challenging years in office and before the revving of his re-election drive, the State of the Union message delivered by the 44th president of the United States had to be interesting, and it was.
Barack Obama has already absorbed the slings and arrows of the presidency, and he has to take the fourth year very seriously. It will be either his last or the year in which voters give him a second term. Regardless, he is on the brink of a rough-and-tumble campaign once the Republicans stop tussling under the thin blanket of party unity.
Mr. Obama can be a spellbinding speaker, and he was again Tuesday night. He presented as his program, in effect his campaign platform, a set of measures that would begin to meet some of what ails the United States. He pointed to the end of the Iraq War, which enabled him to bring home thousands of soldiers and to fulfill of one of his 2008 promises. He gestured to the head on the wall of Osama bin Laden, the propagator of the 9/11 attacks. He referred to the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, which is on the way to ending America's two costly, frustrating and relatively unsuccessful Middle East wars.
Then he bit into the main problem -- the state of the economy. While the economy itself is not the state of the union, it comes close when Americans are plagued by basic concerns such as jobs, wealth and taxes. The prominence in the Republican primaries of matters like candidate Mitt Romney's $27 million income and 13.9 percent tax rate and candidate Newt Gingrich's $1.65 million in "consultant" fees from Freddie Mac (which was bailed out with $52 billion in taxpayer dollars), underlines not only what is on voters' minds, but also what some of the issues will be throughout the 2012 race.
What Mr. Obama said in his speech about the economy sounded right. Who wouldn't want to "reclaim American values," develop "an economy built to last," repatriate jobs, train people and move from an unemployment system to a re-employment system? America's high school students should stay in school until they graduate or reach 18. America needs to develop domestic clean energy to get its head out of the dual nooses of imported oil and dirty fossil fuels.
The questions that leapt to mind as viewers dreamed of these possibilities were how is Mr. Obama going to get the votes for his agenda and, if he does, how is America going to afford it? The president is correct that America's rich must share the tax burden to pay for these constructive changes. The problem is that those who would be called on to shoulder higher, more equitable taxes are also those with millions of dollars to pour into political campaigns to avoid just that.
At one point during the speech, a camera showed Michelle Obama with an expression of concern on her face. That wasn't half as bad as the stony gaze of House Speaker John Boehner, one of the Republican leaders who has worked to obstruct the president's plans.
First Published January 26, 2012 12:00 am
