OBAMA BOUNCES BACK WITH A BANG

THE PLIGHT OF OBAMA PRIOR TO THE STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH

It is a year since Obama’s last State of the Union address. And in the past year there has been nothing but frustration and more frustration. In spite of coming off a resounding second term victory he has been able to get very little done. The Republicans bereft of any policy and split right down the middle have made a virtue out of necessity - Do nothing other than attack Obamacare and blame the President that he is getting nothing done and hope that no-one will notice it is because of them that he cannot get anything done. 

In 2013 Obama asked for forty - one legislative initiatives and got two. There were no new jobs programs, gun control or immigration reform that were his priorities last year. In the interim the Republicans really got lucky when the Obamacare website failed and the insurance companies, blindsided him by closing plans after he had reassured everyone that they could stay on. Then there was the IRS,  Snowden and the National Security mess, Benghazi - all of which were not much, but added to the Republican narrative that, maybe, just maybe, the President was the problem and not them. Jay H. Ell could sense Obama’s frustration as his hair grew grayer and grayer. With 24/7 media coverage and everybody looking for an angle he became irritated with the media too. He was also having problems with the White House Administration and brought in the Clintonite, Leon Podesta, to help out. 

Then the Republican Robert Gates, who Obama had generously kept on as Secretary of Defense, in one of his never ending futile attempts to show bipartisanship, ratted on him. Gates criticized Obama in a sanctimonious and self righteous memoir about the Commander in Chief's ambivalence on Afghanistan.  Why Obama chose Gates is still a mystery to Jay H. Ell. He reeked duplicity and was knee deep in the Iran Contra scandal. There have been detailed criticisms of Gate’s memoir including the fact that he blurbed about Obama's ambivalence in the middle of a Presidential term - if you can’t express your doubts on Defense to your own Secretary of Defense who can you go to  - your therapist? However one fact tells it all Gates has virtually no criticism of  Bush and his Iraq war where he too was the Minister of Defense. But once again the media were more involved in creating salacious headlines and one liners than they were to sass out the reality of it all. And it proved yet another distraction to the embattled President.

To add insult to injury the President was now being blamed for the changed poll numbers for the 2014 Congressional elections. Was he a handicap to the Democratic chances in 2014?  Also liberal Democrats were disappointed at Obama’s lack of radicalism. Pundits pointed to his low approval ratings round about 44% forgetting that the Democrats generally were about 27% and the Republicans were at 17%. - all of this just reflective of the electorate’s unhappiness at their politicians in general. 

STATE OF THE UNION - OBAMA COMES OUT SWINGING

It was with all this as a background that the media awaited his State of the Union address. What would his approach and demeanor be? Could he bounce back? Politics has become a reality show to the media who are now far more interested in style than substance. Would he come out fighting? Would he cowered by his low poll numbers and his impotence? It is well known that Obama takes his State of the Union speeches very seriously and works and reworks them for months.

Obama signaled his intentions by using his Executive privilege to increase the minimum wage of Federal Contract workers to $10.10, up over 30%, the morning prior to the speech. The day before his Press Secretary announced Obama’s modus operandi. He stated, “The President has embraced the idea in the past that he can use his authority and the powers available to the President to advance his agenda for the American people. What we have said is that 2014 was a year of action and he has tasked his team to come up with new ways that he can advance that agenda.” He invited Congress to follow his example and Boehner took the bait and attacked the President for going it alone. The President too can make a virtue out of necessity and get the Republicans to knock every financial equity issue that the polls show that he is on the right side off. 

So one knew from the get go that the President would be up front with his theme of correcting the financial inequities that he has made a priority of his second term. Unemployment and job creation would have to front and central as the other two legs of the trifecta.

OBAMA THE  CHARISMATIC ORATOR

Obama is at his best at the hustings. There is no-one but no-one that can match his eloquence in full flight.  No - one can captivate an audience, deliver, construct a speech of immense width and depth, weave a blanket of policies into a coherent whole, inspire, create theater and use personal stories to illustrate his philosophy and politics, like Obama. No- one can hit the right tone and passion at the right time like Barack Obama. This skill and talent was the one that catapulted him into the Presidency. The Republicans hated it all. They just sat back and hoped it would just end. But Obama went on and on for over an hour and attention never flagged and he ended with a dramatic tribute to a severely wounded Afghanistan war  veteran. The latter epitomizing what he believed was the essence of America. As Jay H. Ell has blogged again and again, to the Republicans’ chagrin there is no - one more American than Obama. Yet their mantra is that he is an alien and from the another world. 

So Obama was the Obama that was elected twice to the Presidency, and unbowed by his setbacks, was back in the saddle. And as always he will be following this up with going back on the stump where he is most at home. 

THE OBAMA AGENDA  2014 - “A YEAR OF ACTION”. 

The Obama agenda has not varied much over the 5 years. It is essentially a liberal agenda trying to even the playing field with equal opportunity, creating jobs, distributive justice of the Country's resources, fixing a broken Health Care System, equal opportunity for a comprehensive education from preschool to College, raising the minimum wage, cobbling a comprehensive immigration reform basically for the Latinos, providing more social services, minority rights and getting out of wars.

The speech focussed on the rights of and the role of women - Obama’s biggest constituency. He maintained that it was inexcusable that in the year 2014 women were earning 77 cents to the dollar that men earned for the same work. He carried on by extolling the virtues of women. He did not need to belabor the fact that this was not rhetoric - his high profile female appointments, his push for rooting out sexual misconduct in the military, his actions that solely impact on women in the Health Care Legislation, like preventive services, reproductive options and equal costs for insurance, are out there for all to see. 

Although Obama labeled 2014 a year of action he acknowledged that he was not going to obtain too much co - operation from Congress. After the usual mandatory and now even perfunctionary offers for bipartisanship, that even he has come to terms with is not going to happen, he declared that he would go it alone where he could.

“AMERICA DOES NOT STAND STILL AND NEITHER WILL I”

Obama, in calling to make progress and to speed up the growth of the middle class and “create ladders of opportunity to all”, juxta opposed their situation with the fortunes of those at the “top”, growth of the economy, corporate profits and soaring share prices, He would enact executive orders, where he could, to help American families. What Obama can actually do is limited. His powers are derived from two sources -  delegated from Congress and those inherent to his position. The latter is where he must have constitutional lawyers working night and day to see where he might intervene. Even if what he does is symbolic, like raising the Federal workers’ minimum wage or allowing Latinos who were born here to apply for citizenship, he sends a strong message.

He also laid out initiatives that were taking place at the behest of the White House including Michelle Obama’s highly successful program to prevent obesity in children. The President then outlined action he was to undertake in the future with groups such a as businessmen. These types of ventures that require no legislation or executive order would become a mechanism whereby he could move the Country forward.

These extra congressional moves really places the Republicans in a bind. Obama will get all the credit for popular moves that they will have no input in. It separates him from the “do nothing Congress”. No longer is he standing around waiting for Godot. This will force the Republicans to begin to offer alternate plans. There is not much time to get this going and as Jay H. Ell predicted  they would really be in a fix if their central plank in their policy - attack Obamacare - came unstuck, which is beginning to happen.

OBAMACARE.

Obama hammered home the obvious advantages of his centerpiece legislation. Children up to the age of twenty-six could remain on their parents’ policies, no -one could be excluded from insurance with preexisting conditions but most significantly that 9 million people had insurance that previously hadn’t. (This number includes at least 3 million who have joined via the Obamacare legislation of which 800,000 are now on Medicaid. and an additional 3 million are the children under 26.) Now there are still two full months to go for registration. All this with no co- operation from 25  Republican controlled States.  He chided the Republicans not to try and reverse the law another 40 times in this Congress session and rather offer some positive contributions. He would look into them.

UPBEAT

While Obama ended on the poignant note of that severely wounded soldier that epitomized the patriotism, guts and character of the nation, he began with the laundry list of his Administration’s achievements. These encompassed economic growth, lowest unemployment figures for years, energy development and the growing independence of the US on energy sources, the increase in manufacturing jobs for the first time in 20 years, increasing investment in America and decreasing deficits. The President claimed that this could be a breakthrough year if America invested in creating more jobs, in education and research. All areas that had been paired back by Republican austerity measures. He believed that America was on the cusp of  greatness and could continue to be take the lead in the world and innovation and progress.

This was just the red meat his Democratic  Congressmen needed. In a tough election year facing astronomical financing by the Republicans and voter suppression they needed a shot in the arm and their President delivered.