Trying to write a critique of the POTUS state-of-the-union speech is not easy, since it lasted for an hour and ten minutes, thus inducing mind-numbing boredom and consequent mind-wandering. Maybe he mistakenly believed that everyone could take a lengthy sermon such as is heard in black churches every Sunday, but such is the case with only the most spell-binding of preachers, which Obama is not. To assault the sensitivities for listeners that long is to destroy one’s message. The applause didn’t materially shorten it and the president had the good sense to talk through it somewhat, at that.
He spent a good deal of time stating the obvious, i.e., that times are bad and mentioned some of the ways. About the only people not hurting, however, are the Wall Street operators, who have profited greatly during his year in office, making his references to somehow making life good for the middle class ring hollow. In fact, most politicians spend a great deal of time and energy explaining how they intend to make the middle class into a better class, as if the upper class and the lower class don’t exist. Actually, they attempt to manipulate the middle class the way the democrats manipulate the African-American-class – anything promised to get the vote.
It would be too harsh to pronounce the effort as an “emperor has no clothes” moment, not least because the president did admit to mistakes, but the effort to launch anything new by way of correcting things was feeble, to say the least. Actually, he would have done well as the actual CEO to give the stockholders (all the citizens) a financial report concerning GM, which is owned by the people now, though they have little power to make their wishes known, something apparently only the automobile czar can do. Or, he might have done the same for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, also government-owned...or the segments of the financial community the government now owns or controls. He did weigh in on those Wall Street “Fat Cats,” but will Congress get caught up in that mess, considering the lobbyists and all those campaign funds?
With the justices sitting before him, Obama took a cheap shot at them, a way of either calling them stupid or in collusion with the corporate “robber barons.” Perhaps he was reminding them that in another life he was something called a “constitutional law professor” and thus qualified, without being any part of an actual case or hearing a single argument, to set them straight. Justice Alito just shook his head and MSNBC’s chief democrat apologist Chris Matthews, wherever he was, must have had an acute attack of ecstatic tingling-leg-syndrome. In any case, he said he forgot Obama was black during the speech, so maybe he also had a tingling blackout.
Never have a group of men glared more venomously than the admirals and generals, who sat right up front, when Obama indicated that he would see to it that homosexuals will openly serve in the military. Never having been in the military, as was the case of Clinton before him, who tried the same game, Obama can’t know that morale is bad when men are forced to knowingly share toilets, living quarters, showers and just about everything else with people whose behavior is unnatural, unsanitary, and repulsive.
There were the usual promises costing mega-billions of dollars the country doesn’t have and which everyone knows will not be kept. Billions of dollars for a fast-train rail operation between Tampa and Disney-World, as announced for a trip to – yep – Florida the day after the SOTUA!? Egad...but this is an election year! This is the mother of all earmarks.
The prexy vented his spleen on the Congress, too...to be fair to all. Hadn’t he told the solons precisely what to do? Of course! Had they done it? Of course not! Do democrats have an overwhelming majority? Of course! Then, shouldn’t he have been mad? Well...no. The citizenry doesn’t want the government to take over health care. About 20 years after its inception, Medicare administration was turned over to private health-insurance companies. The government couldn’t even handle that, much less a universal Medicare, which is what Obama wants.
He vented on the Senate over cap-and-trade. With a super-filibuster-proof-majority of 60 senators, why hadn’t they enacted this melange of taxes-to-the-sky? Two reasons: (1) There’s no such thing as manmade climate-change/warming, and (2) taxes-to-the-sky, forcing businesses into bankruptcy and people out of jobs, unemployment already standing at about 17% now, counting those who have quit looking. The frequent tosses of the head with the clipped, sharp words bespoke an arrogance that probably set the senators’ teeth on edge. The military honchos looked daggers.
The last five minutes of the speech resembled how a basketball coach at halftime during a losing game might approach his players. It was supposed to invoke inspiration. He stated the obvious, to wit, that people don’t trust the government anymore. Actually, they never have to any great extent but now much less so, not least because of what they’ve seen in the last year – wealthy Wall Streeters, government parasites wheeling and dealing with citizens’ lives in their hands, a president who has made about 480 public appearances in the last year (100 full-fledged speeches) mostly amounting to sound and fury, but signifying virtually nothing. Community-organizing has not prepared POTUS for leadership.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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