The Speech :: Political News and commentaries

« Re: More on Tonight's Windmill and Solar Heist | Main | Iraqi Muslim immigrant on trial in Az for honor killing »

January 26, 2011

The Speech

Barack Obama's 2011 SOTU speech is now over, thank God, and as Erick Erickson notes over at Redstate, the speech isn't playing well really anywhere. Leftwing sites don't like it. Rightwing sites don't like it. And largely even the media is admitting the speech fell flat.

As for me, I just couldn't stand to watch what I knew would be all ideologically-driven political rhetoric with no substance and lasting effect whatsoever.

As for Obama's supposed newfound spending restraint, I knew damned well that it is, as W. James Antle, III notes today ... mostly content-free, and not worth wasting my time listening to empty calls of spending restraint juxtaposed with calls for even more new spending. Even the AP fact-checked his imbalanced ledger and found that it did not appear to be adding up when Obama urged more spending on one hand and a spending freeze on the other:

[...] Obama spoke ambitiously of putting money into roads, research, education, efficient cars, high-speed rail and other initiatives in his State of the Union speech. He pointed to the transportation and construction projects of the last two years and proposed "we redouble these efforts." He coupled this with a call to "freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years."

But Obama offered far more examples of where he would spend than where he would cut, and some of the areas he identified for savings are not certain to yield much if anything.

Continue reading for example after example of Obama's red ink ledger.

And when even the WaPo criticizes Obama for not getting serious about reducing the deficit, you know he's got a problem:

PRESIDENT OBAMA entered office promising to be a different kind of politician - one who would speak honestly with the American people about the hard choices they face and would help make those hard calls. Tuesday night's State of the Union Address would have been the moment to make good on that promise. He disappointed. [...]

In his first year in office, Mr. Obama said he couldn't confront the nation's long-term fiscal peril because of imminent financial collapse. In his second year, he said he needed health-care reform first, to "bend the curve" of rising health-care costs. He called for a bipartisan commission to study the debt and promised to pivot in his third year to fiscal reform.

Now that bipartisan commission has reported, but Mr. Obama didn't fully endorse any of its recommendations. To the contrary, he promised more jobs for teachers and construction workers. He warned against "slashing" Social Security benefits. Corporate tax reform is fine, but if it's revenue-neutral, it only postpones - and makes more politically difficult - the task of narrowing the nation's deficit.

In other words, more taxpayer-funded payoffs to unions for contributions to the Democratic Party, and complete disregard for what's needed to fix the economy and our debt problem. As is always the case in Obama's world, politics and ideology trumps what's good for the nation and what the American people are screaming for.

Oh, and don't even get me started on his obvious disinterest in foreign policy. Our enemies and adversaries are laughing their asses off and celebrating over a U.S. president that's dead-set on reducing U.S. influence in the world and letting whatever happens, happen. As Jennifer Rubin notes, by ignoring so much, Obama conveyed to friends and foes alike that his attention is focused inward.

Unfortunately, when the U.S. is absent, bad things happen in the world, as despots take advantage of the opportunity to repress their own citizens and menace their neighbors.

Obama had time and interest to talk about smoked salmon, but not about the Green Movement? That sort of sums up this president's priorities.

For more reaction to the speach be sure to catch Jennifer Rubin's final thoughts on SOTU and Rep. Paul Ryan.

In this video reaction to President Obama's State of the Union address last night, Cato experts Gene Healy, Benjamin H. Friedman, Jagadeesh Gokhale, Neal McCluskey, Sallie James, John Samples, Justin Logan, Daniel J. Mitchell, Michael F. Cannon, and David Rittgers analyze the president's address, and make note some of the outright fabrications in it: