State of the Union Recap/Thoughts

President Obama delivered his first official State of the Union address to Congress and the American people last night, though it was already his third address to a joint session of Congress (last year, he gave a "State of the Nation" speech and the health care reform speech in front of the House and Senate).

So how'd he do? Before getting into some specific things that caught my eye/ear, I'll provide some general, big-picture thoughts. It was well-delivered, as are most of the president's speeches, and he was far more passionate than he has often been over the past year- no doubt a calculated maneuver to offset the criticism that he is too detached, cold, and out-of-touch with ordinary Americans. Unlike Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Barack Obama, an Ivy League-educated, elitist liberal constitutional law professor, has to make a serious effort to seem as if he empathizes with the plight of Americans who are jobless or struggling to make ends meet. Last night, I think he was fairly successful at that.

The speech was too long, and it was also too sharply partisan- especially from a man who promised "hope," a changed culture in Washington, and a nation not of blue and red states but of unified, purple ones. It's the ultimate irony/hypocrisy- this president constantly rails against the hyper-partisan atmosphere in Washington DC and politics as usual, and then promptly begins his partisan sniping.

He couldn't resist repeatedly slamming the Bush administration (he never did it by naming "Bush," but instead kept talking about the mess he inherited/the failures of the "last 8 years"), a tactic that became stale and ineffective months ago. He won an election by doing it, but continuing in campaign mode has made this president seem petulant, petty, and unpresidential. It has to stop. Voters are tired of it, as Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts made clear.

On a side note, repeating this crap about the "last 8 years" drives me especially crazy since DEMOCRATS CONTROLLED CONGRESS FOR THE LAST TWO. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and their liberal minions in Congress passed the last two budgets, not George W. Bush. Obama, a former constitutional law professor (!) needs a basic civics lesson, so that he'll finally understand that it's Congress, not the President, that exclusively holds the power of the purse.

I had a Word Document open during the address last night and I typed out some notes as Obama spoke. Here are some of the points that I felt were important/interesting/ridiculous:

- Early on in the speech, the president said, ”I’ve never been more hopeful about America’s future than I am tonight." It's a vapid, stupid, throwaway line...and, what's worse, it makes him seem far more out-of-touch than optimistic. Most Americans aren't nearly as sanguine about the prospects of economic revival as this president.

- Obama cited the "2 million jobs" that the "stimulus" saved...which is, as so many media outlets have showed, a completely made-up number. He claimed that "first responders" and "teachers" were among those whose jobs were saved...but that's at least deceptive if not untruthful. The vast majority of policemen, firefighters, and teachers weren't really going to lose their jobs without stimulus money. As Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has astutely observed again and again, the stimulus money was actually used to paper over holes in state budgets for another year, saving useless bureaucratic jobs that ought to have been cut back. The stimulus allowed state and local governments to continue living lavishly instead of trimming the fat like many American families have had to do.

- Obama repeatedly presented himself as the "fighter"- and he reserved especially harsh words for the Democrat-controlled Senate. On several occasions, he urged the Senate to follow the House's lead in passing things like financial reform, comprehensive energy reform, etc.

- The president, unsurprisingly given his incredible hubris/arrogance, was unable to admit that the health care reform plan that he favors is opposed by a majority of Americans because it's a bad bill. Furthermore, it was absolutely disgusting that he took credit for ending the war in Iraq- first, because he couldn't bring himself to say we had WON, and second, because we've only been able to responsibly wind down US involvement thanks to the surge strategy implemented by President Bush- a policy that Senator/Candidate Obama vociferously opposed.

- I smiled when they panned to Senator McCain and you could see him mouth "Blame it on Bush" to the person sitting next to him after Obama launched into another one of his exhausting "we're in this mess because of the last 8 years" statements.

- Obama's remark about lobbyists not being appointed to administration posts was laugh-provoking. I was waiting for someone to shout "YOU LIE!" after he said it. Boy, it takes a healthy amount of chutzpah to stand up in front of Congress and the American people and just tell a bare-faced whopper of a lie.

- Perhaps the most interesting part of the address was, I thought, the moment at which President Obama openly scolded the Supreme Court for its recent ruling on campaign finance restrictions. With the justices seated right in front of him, it was uncomfortable and awkward to watch...and it certainly seemed inappropriate, given separation of powers and the role of the judiciary as a neutral arbiter of the law, to demagogue them like Obama did. It was even more revolting watching Senators like Chuck Schumer grin and applaud loudly right in the justices' ears from the row behind them. Ew. GOOD FOR SAM ALITO THOUGH- you could see him shake his head slightly and whisper "not true" when Obama made yet another inaccurate statement about the ruling (once again- come on Barack! You were a constitutional law expert supposedly!). Some will say Alito ought not have done this- but Obama and the Democrats who stood and applauded raucously are the ones in the wrong. It was a breach of decorum, and Obama owes the Court an apology- especially the 5 justices who issued the ruling (Kennedy, often the swing vote, wrote the majority decision).

- Obama spent far too little time on foreign affairs/fighting terrorism. After the Fort Hood shooting and the Christmas Day bombing attempt, he owed it to the American people to offer a coherent defense of his administration's anti-terror policies. If he supports Attorney General Holder's policy of trying KSM in NYC- and he must because, after all, Barack Obama is the decider- then he should have defended it. Ditto closing Gitmo and moving terrorists to US soil. Ditto treating the undie-bomber as a criminal and Mirandizing him rather than treating him as an unlawful enemy combatant and interrogating him in a military setting to extract intelligence that could bolster homeland security and our efforts to disrupt terrorism abroad.

- His casual and unbelievably unspecific mentions of a) repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell and b) the need to fix our broken immigration system were silly. Surely no one, not legislators, not the American people, honestly believes he cares a whit about these issues. The empty, tepid rhetorical support for these two agenda items certainly didn't help Obama with his party's base.

- Obama did a nice job injecting a little humor into the address, and he also finished strong with his "We don't quit, I won't quit" line.

So there are some of the parts of the speech that I highlighted as I watched.

What I did find a bit surprising was that there was certainly no move toward the center by the president. He's determined to keep on governing from the left, it appears, which must be making the Blue Dog Democrats squirm. Barack Obama realizes he's not on the ballot in 2010, and it looks like it'll take a disastrous midterm election (a la Clinton in '94) to force him to do something like Clinton's triangulation. That can't sit well with Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, and Co. But oh well. By not pivoting toward the center, Obama showed an extraordinary degree of defiance and a lot of egotism. He basically flipped Republicans, a number of Democrats, the entire Senate, and a majority of Americans the bird last night. If you don't like my policies, tough, you're getting them anyway, because I know what's best. It's quite an attitude- and one he's likely to pay for in 2010 and 2012, if he cares.

Oh, and one final thought: if the president really wants Americans to see him as a FIGHTER, why doesn't he start by vowing to fight the Islamic terrorists who are trying to kill us as war criminals/unlawful combatants instead of common criminals entitled to the same rights as American citizens? Just askin'.

Finally- the Republican response by Bob McDonnell, the recently-elected governor of Virginia. It was nothing special, but of course much better than Bobby Jindal's rejoinder to the State of the Nation last year. McDonnell did what he had to do, and he did it quite well. Kudos to him for repeatedly alluding to/quoting the Founders. Bravo for waving the federalism banner- I personally found that to be the best part of the speech, when he said that us governors, like the Founders, understand that government closest to the people governs best. He also had a good line about how Republican health insurance reform proposals aren’t thousand page bills crafted behind closed doors that no one has bothered to read.

McDonnell's speech was free from the mudslinging and partisanship of Obama's address...and it was, mercifully, much shorter. It was upbeat, hopeful, and genuine. McDonnell definitely looks like a rising star in the party...and we sorely need those.