The State of the Union and Other ‘Shockers

A dear old friend has kindly offered us a ticket to a basketball game pitting the third-ranked and undefeated Wichita State University Wheatshockers against a lightly-regarded Loyola of Illinois Ramblers squad with a losing record, so we’ll have far more important things to do tonight than watch the State of the Union address. We probably would have skipped the speech in any case, however, and expect that most of our countrymen will do the same.

Article II and Section 3 of the constitution require that the president “shall from time give to congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge the necessary,” and we are far fussier sticklers about the constitution than the current president has been, but the practice of an annual oration to a joint session of Congress is a relatively new custom and one whose time has clearly passed. For all the fuss that the networks and the newspapers make about it the speeches have become a drearily predictable affair, as quickly forgotten as a New Year’s resolution, and there is no reason to believe that this year’s edition will be any different. Even without the benefit of leaked transcripts from highly-placed sources we are certain of what will be said, how the chattering classes will react, and what the political consequences will be.

There will be much somber reflection by the networks’ most familiar faces about the earth-shaking importance of the speech, followed by footage of every Democrat and a few forlorn Republicans from purplish districts jockeying for handshake position as the president proceeds with a royal swagger down the aisle toward the podium, along with all the other pomp and circumcision that attends these events. The president will then begin by declaring that the state of the union is sound, without any of the derisive laughter that such a ridiculous claim would ordinarily provoke, and then launch into an over-written, over-long, obviously self-serving account of the nation’s woes. He will briefly touch on the ongoing debacle of Obamacare, touting the few million who have signed on without mentioning that most of them previously had better plans that they liked and were promised they could keep, and he will spend the rest of it blathering endlessly about income inequality and proposing various fanciful solutions to this ineradicable fact of a free society.

All the talking heads on all the news stations save Fox will love it, and do their own endless blathering about how eloquently it was stated, but nothing will become of it but a bunch of ineffectual executive orders. Even the squishiest Republicans from the most purplish districts will not be persuaded, nor will the voters in any of the contested jurisdictions, and every item on the president’s ponderously explained agenda will be soon be a mere bargaining chip in the next round of debt ceiling negotiations. The only thing the president will talk about that might actually occur is immigration reform, as there seems to be some enthusiasm in both parties for flooding an historically weak labor market with millions more unskilled laborers, but the main interest will be in seeing which Republicans applaud and thereby invite a bruising primary challenge.

There will be the usual inspiring baritone delivery, and the gospel music cadences that have long wowed the pundits, but nothing that amounts to must-see TV. We’ll check a post-speech transcript to see what we missed, and it might be worth commenting on, but we’re confident it won’t be anything worth missing a ‘Shocker game.

— Bud Norman

In Quite a State

The state of the union, according to the president’s latest annual oration on the topic, is stronger. Presidents always say this sort thing in State of the Union addresses, regardless of the circumstances, so perhaps President Barack Obama can be forgiven for merely following form.

There isabundant evidence that the state of the union is not nearly so strong as it was when Obama gave his first address, however, and his arguments to the contrary were not convincing. He touted an end to a “decade of war” despite the growing dangers of the world, and boasted of a Fed-inflated stock market bubble. He argued that his massive new bureaucracies mean “consumers, patients, and homeowners enjoy stronger protections than ever,” presumably from those nasty corporations, but seemed unconcerned about what will protect them from the bureaucrats. He further claimed that “we have cleared away the rubble of crisis,” but left unmentioned that we have also piled up an additional $6 trillion or so of debt in the process.

Nothing else in the speech offered much hope that thing the country will soon be strengthened in any noticeable way. Obama threw in some boilerplate language about encouraging free enterprise and rewarding individual initiative, but he seemed to rush through it on his way to calls for higher taxes, more government spending in areas of the economy that have traditionally been left to private enterprise, and an unmistakably collectivist ethic. All of this was couched in the language of “revenues,” “investments,” and “helping folks,” of course, but the point was still clear. He also argued that the government should become “smarter,” a worthy goal, but still seemed smitten with the alternative energy “investments” that have thus far been an expensive diversion from the potential traditional energy boom. Obama’s opponent in the past election was provably smart about investing, though, and Obama managed to convince a majority of voters of that the poor overly-rich fellow should be reviled for it.

The speech also stressed the need to “forge reasonable compromise” to make “some basic decisions about our budget” to avoid the so-called “sequestration” cuts, lamenting the government’s tendency to “drift from one manufactured crisis to the next” without mentioning that the sequestration cuts were his idea. Nor did he mention that the government hasn’t had a budget at all during his time office due to his party’s control of the Senate. He was slightly bi-partisan in noting that “both parties have worked together to reduce the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion, meaning that they agreed to not go yet another $2.5 trillion in debt, but it was still understood as a warning to the Republicans they should cave early in the upcoming budget negotiations.

More talk of reasonable compromises followed, with Obama generously agreeing to “modest reforms” of the entitlement system so long as they are accompanied by yet another round of “revenue increases.” The multi-trillion dollar shortfalls in the entitlement programs require only slight tweaking, apparently, and so long as those darned rich people pay more Obama seems willing to go along.

Obama added some talk of illegal immigrants and guns, threw in a subtle allusion to homosexuality, and finished with the usual tear-jerking shtick about the little people out there. We were to stunned to follow it after the part about Obamacare driving down health care costs, though, and we assume it was much the same as in past speeches. This was the fifth Obama State of the Union address and there only three to go, unless he decides that those pesky term limits are of more consequences than the rest of the Constitution, so we do feel slightly strengthened by that.

— Bud Norman

State of Confusion

President Barack Obama gives a lot of speeches, more than even his most ardent admirers now bother to hear, but it’s almost a patriotic duty to listen in on a State of the Union address. Being dutifully patriotic only to a reasonable extent we sat down to read the transcript instead, figuring it would save time and spare us the soporific effects of Obama’s sonorous baritone, and we found the text quite confusing.

The speech opened with praise for the veterans of the Iraq war, with Obama saying they have “made the United States safer and more respected around the world.” We’re always happy to hear to praise for our fighting men and women, and gladly welcome Obama to the crazed cowboy warmonger camp, but we couldn’t understand how such a happy outcome might have resulted from what Obama had called “a stupid war,” or how it might have occurred without the surge strategy that Obama had opposed while calling for an early surrender.

Moving on to paint a Norman Rockwell-esque portrait of the America he hopes to create, Obama said he envisions a country “where we’re in control of our own energy, and our security and prosperity aren’t so tied to unstable parts of the world.” Recalling the president’s recent decision to block construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, we were left wondering if Canada can truly be considered an unstable part of world.

Waxing nostalgic about his grandparents’ halcyon days of World War II, when hard work guaranteed a happy life, the millions of hard-working but unhappy Americans of the time notwithstanding, Obama said he hoped to “restore an America where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.” This led us to think Obama would announce he was revoking the many waivers from his health care reforms that had been handed out to his political allies, but no such announcement followed.

Obama then mentioned how technological innovation causes unemployment, a favorite them, but he offered no specific plan for returning to dial-up internet access or other primitive technologies.

The next part, where Obama explained the mortgage crisis that led to the economic downturn, was especially confusing. He said that only after the recession Americans “learned that mortgages had been sold to people who couldn’t afford or understand them,” but somehow forgot to mention that it happened because government policy encouraged and required it, political allies such as ACORN protested for it, and lawyers such as Barack Obama sued banks to do it. He went on to lament that “regulators had looked the other way, or didn’t have the authority to stop the bad behavior,” but neglected the key point that it was his own party that ignored and slandered the regulators who had tried to warn of the impending collapse of Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac. Obama added that he “will oppose any effort to return to the policies that brought on this economic crisis in the first place,” but we are unaware of any Republicans advocating more subprime lending.

Moving on to a vigorous yet vague call for a new manufacturing policy, Obama took time to boast of bailing out General Motors and Chrysler. While reeling off the companies’ successes, the Chevy Volt conspicuously unmentioned, Obama said that “Some even said we should let it die.” We can’t recall any saying that, and are sure that most opponents of the government argued that the companies should be re-structured under new private ownership through a proven bankruptcy system, but perhaps Obama did meet someone of that opinion, so we’ll let it slide. What made the boast utterly baffling, though, came what seemed to be several hours later into the oration when he sternly demanded that “It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bail-outs, no hand-outs, and no cop-outs.”

We found ourselves drifting further at sea when Obama made his pitch for a jobs re-training program. Beginning with an obligatory personal anecdote, this one about Jackie Brey, a single mother — the best kind, for personal anecdote purposes — who went from being an unemployed mechanic to a manager of a robotics plant by attending her local community college, Obama then demanded that the government “cut through the maze of confusing training programs, so that from now on, people like Jackie have one program, one website, and one place to go for all the information and help they need.” This left us mulling why Brey is smart enough to run a robotics plant but too stupid to choose from a variety of educational options, and why private enterprises or local governments should be barred from offering services in the name of simplicity, but perhaps Obama hopes to spare us further confusion by giving only one government-run choice.

Oh, and he also demanded “Let’s make sure that people who bundle campaign contributions for Congress can’t lobby Congress.” If he also wants to make sure that bundlers can’t lobby the White House for things such as guaranteed loans to their phony baloney solar panels he didn’t mention it, but that might have been a mere oversight.

There was plenty more, of course, including a laid-off furniture-maker who is now making wind turbines, despite the devastating economic effects of high technology, some shameless kowtowing to the teachers’ unions, and the usual soak-the-rich rhetoric, complete with Warren Buffet’s now-legendary secretary. We’ll save that for another day, though, as we’re starting to feel dizzy from confusion and really should lie down.

— Bud Norman