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What to Expect From President Obama's Final State of the Union Address
 When he gives his final State of the Union speech Tuesday, President Obama will be addressing members of Congress. But they won't be his target audience. They never really were. Except for the useful tools among them. In fact, he probably wouldn't care if they didn't show up at all. Fewer people to cough and applaud and get in the way of him hearing himself speak. Experts predict that rather than trying to cajole a Republican-controlled Congress to cooperate with him in 2016, the president will be asking viewers around the country to remember his legacy items and consider the future in an attempt to set the tone for the next (he hopes, Democratic) president. Ah. Educating those who fawn over him on what the narrative for framing his "accomplishments" should be. Good for denial. "It's not going to be a laundry list of things on the agenda" like most State of the Union addresses, said Norm Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. I wonder why. That's how the president himself framed it in a video message sent to supporters Wednesday. Funny how the smartest guy in the room always figures out a better way of doing things than even the founding fathers could have thought of. "What I want to focus on in this State of the Union address [is] not just the remarkable progress we've made, not just what I want to get done in the year ahead, but what we all need to do together in the years to come," he said. You've had eight years to fix things. They're not. We stolen from our future prosperity just to keep us going today, and we've just started another recession. That is not an accomplishment. And unless you talk about paying down the debt and securing this country to be the leader of the free world again, your words will only be appreciated by those who have no hope of understanding how badly you have hurt the nation. But why not take advantage of a captive Congressional audience to make a final, grand gesture on big-ticket items like gun control and immigration reform? Since it's working so well so far. For one, Obama began the year demonstrating that he's basically given up on Congress' ability to deliver on such issues. When he announced a slate of new executive actions on gun safety and mental health, he suggested they were simply initial steps toward meaningful reform. I prefer to think of these executive actions as the first order of business for the next president to unsign. "It won't happen during this Congress. It won't happen during my presidency," Obama said of comprehensive gun control legislation in a speech Tuesday. "But a lot of things don't happen overnight. A woman's right to vote didn't happen overnight. The liberation of African Americans didn't happen overnight." So if gun control ever makes its way through Congress, we can all thank you. Got it. That's all the more reason why Obama's State of the Union is more of a breakup note with Congress than anything else: showing members that he's already over them and is looking toward the impact his solo work will have on the country's future. Solo is the key word here. Does this mean he will continue his "leading from his behind" policy? "There's no point in wasting time trying to convince this Congress to embrace really any aspects of his agenda," said congressional scholar Thomas Mann. Everyone's crazy except for the enlightened one. The president is also likely to take advantage of his captive national prime-time audience to highlight what he considers his biggest accomplishments of the past seven years. That should be the shortest part of his speech. If you remove whatever he drops in here that he defines to be an "accomplishment" that really isn't. Like trying to kill coal-fired power plants before their time. "I would think there's a very good chance he'll talk about what shape the economy was in when he got elected and inaugurated and what's happened since and where we have to go," Ornstein said. One last "Bush's fault". He might even talk about what else he could have achieved if Republicans in Congress did not have a knee-jerk reaction against his agenda -- a point which he could link to the presidential race. What "knee jerk"? You mean the reaction that's been going on since you were first elected through lies and voter fraud? "He'll pretty much ignore Congress in terms of appealing for support, but use the Republican majorities as a way to link them with the Republican candidates for the White House and talk about just how extremely conservative the party has become," Mann said. If the Trunks moved to the right, it's what was required to keep you in check. You're simply looking in the mirror, 0bean. That's not to say the president is giving up entirely on passing bills in 2016: there could certainly be movement on less sweeping issues like criminal justice reform, mental health legislation and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. Given your penchant to keep criminals out of jail, to misread the health system, and to enter into harmful agreements, I think not. But ironically, even as the White House faces a year of small-ball legislation ahead, officials are framing it as a conscious decision to focus on the bigger picture, well after Obama leaves office, as White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough did in an email to supporters accompanying the president's video message. I would love to have been a fly on the wall at the meeting that decided how to frame the SOTU speech. Was his lack of accomplishments and leadership addressed directly at any point, or was it the elephant in the room they had to talk around? "What we have left to do is bigger than any one policy initiative or new bill in Congress. This is about who we are, where we're headed, and what kind of country we want to be," he said. I'd be happy to just be a country again. Posted by: gorb 2016-01-12 |
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