Thursday, January 28, 2010
President Obama delivered his first State of the Union Address last night. Coming in at 7,077 words, and faced with tanking job approval numbers and following the stunning loss of the late Ted Kennedy’s senate seat to a Republican, much was riding on how the public viewed Mr. Obama’s speech. For me, these 32 words were the most important of the address:
“This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are.”
From the start, I said President Obama needs to do 3 things for me to consider him a success; redeploy the troops out of Iraq, repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and finally, repeal DOMA. If he accomplishes these 3 things, I will view his first term favorably.
Text of the State of the Union Address can be read HERE.
What did you think of the State of the Union Address? Did President Obama do what was needed?
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From the Left 
Oddly enough, I thought Obama was a bit flat last night. He touched on the correct themes but I thought he looked and sounded tired. Not until the very end did he indulge in the rhetorical flourishes he’s known for when giving a speech.
I disagree, feminazi. Had the president delivered a more fiery speech then his critics would’ve pounced on him and said he was still campaigning. I think the president did what he needed to do, like stick it to the Reagan/Bush Five on the Supreme Court for their terrible decision to let corporations flood campaigns with unfettered sums of money. Overall, I thought the speech was good, a bit long, and quite humble.
Here in Arizona McCain is attacking the President’s intentions of repealing DADT. Saying, “Repealing DADT would be a bad mistake.” He gives proof that “we have the strongest and best military we ever have had.” While that is debatable in itself, I would remind the aging Senator, that the military he holds up to the light has gays and lesbians in it already.
Obama did his thing.
He touched upon what he accomplished in year one, admitted where he screwed up, and laid out his goals for 2010.
His tone was circumspect, and chastened, and he sounded mature and statesman-like. I’ve read a lot of nasty comments from people on the left this morning claiming the speech was overly long, boring and hollow. Whatever. You can’t please everyone.
My favorite part of the State of the Union address was Obama admonished the Supreme Court for their terrible ruling on campaign finance. Alito looked like he was going to jump up and scream. A classic.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is ridiculous.
Gays have been serving in the US military for 100 years and the brass at the Pentagon knows this.
I wish Bill Clinton hadn’t thrown the gays under the bus to appease the GOP and save his presidency but he was busy getting his knob drained by interns and he had to move to the right.
I think I’m tired of politics. I need to take a break and watch HGTV and Bravo. Seriously, my brain is fried.
I’ve said it before, after eight, long years of Bush and Cheney, we expected Obama’s election to make the birds sing, stop global warming, cure AIDS, cancer and MS, lower gas prices and eliminate the debt.
But the reality of the mess Bush left the newly elected president to sort out was monumental and can’t realistically be fixed in 12 months, or 24 months or 48 months.
I agree with Christopher: limit our expectations to 4 or 5 issues and hope for the best. No one man or woman can fix this country overnight. Now, that said, I am in no way arguing that DADT needed to be repealed at the beginning of Obama’s term in office. By not getting it done it has become just another political wedge issue for Republicans and homophobes to pounce on.
vicodaniel1987@yahoo.com
I voted “NO” in the poll. You want to know why? I still heard Obama fixating on bipartisanship. What is it going to take to get it through his thick head that in the current climate in Washington, the Republicans have no interest in working with the Democrats? I guess when Obama is defeated in 2012, the light bulb over his head will finally go on.
DADT, DOMA, all that means nothing if people don’t have jobs, homes, and healthcare. Especially healthcare, which is the single largest driving force in the rise of the deficit.
The speech was great. I liked when he slapped some bbc on some republican noodle.
A view from the right:
I guess there was a chance that Obama could turn things around last night, but I don’t think he succeeded, he didn’t say anything new and a lot of what he did say will only fuel speculation and controversy. Just look at one example, of interest to this blog, changing “DADT” is an important issue to the bloggers here… but did he not promise this last year? If so, why did he not do it? Isn’t it late in the game now? it would have been easy to change this in 2009, but in 2010 more difficult due to the midterm elections. Personally, I couldn’t care less about whether DADT is changed, but it sure is important to a critical segment of Obama’s base. So now he has painted himself into a corner on this issue. If he doesn’t absolutely do it this year, he will further alienate part of his base. But if he does push it through, it will be another issue for opponents to use in the campaign.
I am wondering about one thing: does this require congressional action? or is the DADT policy an executive order that can be rescinded at any time by the commander-in-chief?
Every president has difficulties are the beginning of his administration. Obama is no different. When he came into office he inherited a staggering mess from 8 years of incompetency courtesy of George Bush. I wouldn’t want Obama’s job for all the money in the world. There is no area of this country that wasn’t marred and damaged from the Bush years. If he had it to do over again, I bet Obama wouldn’t have spent all of 2009 on healthcare. Not when the issue every polls shows the American people care most about now is jobs and the economy.
I don’t think that Obama ignored the jobs issue. Wasn’t the first and most important act of the administration and congress in 2009 the Stimulus Bill? And that was designed to create jobs and get the economy moving. And there have been a plethora of other laws and executive actions taken to boost the economy : cash-for-clunkers, cash-for-caulkers, unemployment benefit supplements and extensions, bail-out of GM, subsidies for COBRA participants … I could go on and on but you get the point.
In my view, Obama’s main problem is that none of this job creation action has worked … so far.
I think Obama’s getting bad advice from his senior adviser, Rahm Emanuel.
Emanuel uses terminology like “retarded” when he disagrees with his fellow Democrats. It’s Emanuel and not Obama who is responsible for this stupid bipartisanship effort.
Look, most the Republicans in the Congress would don a hood and a robe and attend a presidential hanging if they thought they could get away with it and not lose their seat.
I agree with VicoDaniel. Bush/Cheney left this country in really shitty shape.
“Gays have been serving in the US military for 100 years..”….. I’m guessing it is a bit longer than that….
… my personal view is I don’t want any…ANY military serving in Iraq and Afghanistan…. ANY…gay, white, black,hispanic, straight, liberal, conservative, near-sighted, over weight….. and then fix DADT. I guess that’s my priority measure….. THAT would help the economy, provide jobs, build schools. Hey, not dis-sing anyone here…. just saying.
Thanks for pointing the blame at Rahm Emanual, Obama’s senior advisor. I didn’t know much about Rahm, other than that he was a Bill Clinton advisor and a very liberal illinois congressman. Now that I’ve read about his reputation, I’m aghast! Did our president really think this guy would be a good man to have on his personal staff? Surely Obama could have found someone more stable and less controversial? Here’s an excerpt of stories about “Rahmbo” from wikipedia =>
“Emanuel is known for his “take-no-prisoners style” that has earned him the nickname “Rahmbo.”[21] Emanuel is said to have sent a dead fish in a box to a pollster who was late delivering polling results.[17] On the night after the 1996 election, “Emanuel was so angry at the president’s enemies that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign, grabbed a steak knife and began rattling off a list of betrayers, shouting ‘Dead! … Dead! … Dead!’ and plunging the knife into the table after every name.”[5][7] Before Tony Blair gave a pro-Clinton speech during the impeachment crisis, Emanuel reportedly screamed to Blair’s face “Don’t f*ck this up!” while Clinton was present; Blair and Clinton both burst into laughter.”
Oh a very funny guy indeed! But should he be a close advisor to the president ? Frankly, it’s scary!
Sorry, don’t mean to spam the blog, but I read more in Wikipedia and found that Rahm is also … get ready … hold onto your seat …. swallow that coffee so that you don’t spit it out when you read this …. A FAT CAT BANKER !!!
“After serving as an advisor to Bill Clinton, in 1998 Emanuel resigned from his position in the Clinton administration and became an investment banker at Wasserstein Perella (now Dresdner Kleinwort), where he worked until 2002.[29] In 1999, he became a managing director at the firm’s Chicago office. Emanuel made $16.2 million in his two-and-a-half-year stint as a banker, according to Congressional disclosures.[29][30] At Wasserstein Perella, he worked on eight deals, including the acquisition by Commonwealth Edison of Peco Energy and the purchase by GTCR Golder Rauner of the SecurityLink home security unit from SBC Communications.[29]
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How, oh HOW could our president have this man as one of his senior advisors!
Actually, the Obama administration announced pretty early last year that it was “putting off” dealing with DADT. Frustrating that, but at least they were up front about it. So it is a bit of revisionist history (even if posed in a [rhetorical?] question) that his promise to do so this year is just as hollow as it was last year.
I also think it is also a bit too reductive to say the “Obama” stimulus bill didn’t work. Certainly, it didn’t make the economy magically rebound into pots of fairy gold, but it did slow and begin to reverse the job loss rate (not the same as the number of unemployed, btw). The problem here is that the effects of these efforts shouldn’t be measured against the ideals of what we want our economy to be but against the trends of where our economy was headed after the fiscal policies of the prior administration.
Yes, I understand that our “friends” on the right would like to forget the Bush years. I think their frustration over “BIOB” (Blame it on Bush) rhetoric at least acknowledges that Bush is an easy target to blame, and implicitly concedes that his administration’s actions are heavily responsible for the current economic mess we are in. What I think Obama did quite adroitly last night was remind the US where we were headed after Bush and how much his policies put the breaks on that precipitous downward slide. He also reminded us that the proposals coming from the right (when there are such unicorns) tend to be a return to Bush era policies that got us in this mess in the first place. That is not BIOB — that is learning from history, that is context.
So sorry, America, that Barack Obama turned out not to be a magical negro. We could certainly use some magic at this time. And yet, the problem with dodging a bullet is that too many of us forget there ever was one.
For a while there I flashed back on Bush with the “safe clean nuclear power, offshore oil drilling & clean coal” crapola.
Et tu Obama? Drill Baby Drill?
I find myself HOPING these WILL be empty, unfulfilled political promises to be broken.
Toxic Sludge anyone??
Was the “I don’t quit” closing remark a jab @ Palin??
I did a write up on the new face of rebuttals.
Yuck!
In the end it all seems like hot air to me & this was not some fantastic SOTU address.
I find myself sick of it all.
It may be a new decade, but it sure seems like a lot of the same old s**t.
Basketball or bloviating politicians? Go Cavs.
The camera said it all last night. President Obama rose to the occasion and took responsibility for what he got right and what he got wrong in his first 12 months as president.
While the Republicans just sat there looking like they had sticks up their asses. No wonder why poll after poll shows the majority of the American people just don’t trust the GOP.
I liked a lot of what I heard. Fees on the banks to force them to repay the taxpayers, a new jobs program, and a commitment to high-speed rail. All of which makes sense to me.
Recommitting to repealing the discriminatory Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — while I think President Obama needed to address this, what would make a lot of people happy is to sign an executive order suspending the law until the Congress gets a repeal to his desk to sign.
Lea Lea — You hit the nail on the proverbial head.
The camera doesn’t lie and rightwinger, Sam Alito’s reaction to President Obama was like a beacon shined on his face to the world see, leaving no doubt about his hostile, radical judicial views.
I’m at a loss to understand why Democrats are so critical of President Obama’s State of the Union address?
Are you saying the idiot Bush made more sense? Or Ronald Reagan?
Let’s see. Obama mentioned:
ending lobbyist influence
repealing ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’
redeploying the combat troops out of Iraq
a new jobs program
cutting capital gains taxes on small business
passing healthcare reform
prosecuting civil rights crimes
high speed rail projects
clean energy
new, nuclear energy plants
paying down the national debt
and no cuts to Medicare and Social Security
But, the Democrats are complaining? Sorry folks, but you’ve lost me here.
I loved the speech, even though it ran a bit long.
President Obama was intelligent, not overly wonkish, and owned up to his mistakes. He shamed the GOP for being the ‘party of no,’ shoved his finger in the faces of the Scalia Five, and reassured the American people he was in it for the long haul.
I give the speech a B+.
I liked the speech fine and I think the president reconnected with the American people.
Of course, after the speech, you must deliver or the people will get very angry. Think Massachusetts.
On his worst day, Obama is superior to Bush I or his kid, Bush II. I can’t ever recall either Bush saying a thing in the SOTU.
What Big Hank said.