Obama's Promises

The State of the Union speech on Tuesday night was, in many ways, a typical version of the annual ritual, with much bluster and little concrete action to come. But Obama did lay out a series of proposals from universal preschool, tax reform, immigration reform, a minimum wage increase, a cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions and infrastructure investments to new housing incentives, manufacturing incentives, energy plans, a program for scoring college education by affordability, gun control and paycheck equity. The speech did lay out a direct challenge to Republicans to stop blocking everything he is trying to do. It started with this call to restore the vitality of the middle class and establish more equity across the economy:

"It is our generation’s task, then, to reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth – a rising, thriving middle class.It is our unfinished task to restore the basic bargain that built this country – the idea that if you work hard and meet your responsibilities, you can get ahead, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or who you love.It is our unfinished task to make sure that this government works on behalf of the many, and not just the few; that it encourages free enterprise, rewards individual initiative, and opens the doors of opportunity to every child across this great nation." (From Full Transcript Available Here: NYT 

Then he moved on to soften the position by referencing our preternatural distrust of too much government (or "big government" as conservatives have labelled it, to both tie it to "big business" and its negative connotations and undermine critiques of the latter). This is a good move, in my estimation, as it allows him to argue for the importance of government in some cases, a point he made in his first inaugural speech, and to attack Republicans for their "policy blockade" strategy. It is not because of Congress and the President that trust in government is so low, it is because of the Republican unwillingness to compromise on most things and their tendency to block anything that actually helps the people over the elites, or hurts big business. Here is the excerpt: 

"The American people don’t expect government to solve every problem. They don’t expect those of us in this chamber to agree on every issue. But they do expect us to put the nation’s interests before party. They do expect us to forge reasonable compromise where we can. For they know that America moves forward only when we do so together; and that the responsibility of improving this union remains the task of us all.Our work must begin by making some basic decisions about our budget – decisions that will have a huge impact on the strength of our recovery." 

He then spends a reasonable amount of time providing a strong argument for his plan to avoid the sequester and make sensible changes to the budget that don't hurt education, the economy or our "military readiness." While dramatic cuts to the last item are certainly dangerous in the world we live in today, it is troubling that there is no serious questions being raised about reasonable reductions. Military spending is still an absurdly large part of discretionary spending and one that seems to have less relevance to our lives as no realistic war stands around the corner (the blubbering about Iran has appeared to quiet). But many in the GOP want to make draconian cuts to social programs and actually keep the military budget at the same level. This is just the latest example of a party that has become so mired in an inflexible ideological model and Realpolitik discourse for so long, they can't seem to think straight or act on anything. A modest proposal for the Republicans today would simply be to be modest and stop listening to the right wing loons blustering on the TV and radio waves. 

In any case, I think Obama finally laid out an argument for the key role one party in this country is playing in undermining the will and interests of the majority of Americans. It is an essential argument to make to the American public, who are sometimes too often easily bamboozled into believing that Obama is the problem and somehow Mitt Romney or the GOP in general would save the economy. In fact, the GOP could be suffering through the first wave of a disease that could lead to their ultimate demise. Just as the Democrats weren't paying enough attention as Goldwater, Buckley and their ilk set the foundations for the conservative revolution in the 50s and 60s, so today it appears conservatives fail to recognize the demographic and ideological shift that has swept the country along a potentially more progressive path. Of course, they did realize that Latinos played a huge role in the last election cycle, and might support some sort of Dream Act. But one assumes this will do little to win over those votes in the short run, given that Obama and Democrats have been arguing for the reform for years. Ultimately, a party that serves the elite can only win if democracy is undermined directly or through the power of hegemony. Large factions of the GOP continue to work in this vein. But can they suppress the will of an increasing majority who are seeing their quality of life decline year by year? I guess we'll have to wait and see ...