SOTU!
For the state of the union I actually got a pizza ready :P. It was exciting!
Well, there's a couple of reactions I have to the speech - silly and substitutive. So first, the silly style analysis! I guess I should start with the negatives. I thought that there were a lot of really expected cliches that are expected, but still kind of dumb (i.e. the "Wall Street. vs. Main Street" dichotomy, "People are tightening their belts around the dinner table, so the government should tighten its belt too!"). These kind of made me want to die. Discounting these, I thought that stylistically it was very different than any state of the union address I've seen. It kind of blended the overpowering Obama rhetoric we're used to hearing with some concreteness. So there was a lot Typically when I've seen these kinds of speeches, the President only makes vague references to the actual people in the room. If there's applause, they're supposed to ignore it. Obama, by contrast, seemed to be talking directly at the congressmen. When he mentioned Tax cuts and the Republicans didn't give a standing ovation, he actually said something like "Well I thought I'd get applause from THAT!". When he first mentioned Michelle and she got an ovation for the Health Obesidy thing, he explained her somewhat tense expression with "she gets embarrassed..."
At the same time, this kind of somewhat humble or "concrete" presence stood out when talking about his initiatives. He addressed failings from both parties in a very direct way. And by the end of the night he got a lot heavier. It's like he was slowly drawing the audience in.
Substantively, I'll start with the negatives. You know, in a recent interview with Dianne Sawyer, he said that over the past year he's "lost touch" with the American people, and that he'd been listening "too much" about policy from technocrats. As a technocrat, this offends me! I see a lot of really dumb populist touches (that I was kind of expecting) in this speech. He talks about a spending freeze (which is one of those things that people who haven't studied any economics tend to go for but is actually not a very good idea at all). I mean really, we don't know that we're going to be out of a recession in a year, and assuming that we are, then spending will inherently drop. If we aren't, then a spending freeze will make the situation worse. So it's either a completely ineffective policy or a counter productive one. Moreover, he talked about a spending freeze that leaves Medicare, Social Security, and Defense alone. Now keep in mind, I like these programs, but either one of the versions of the health care bill would run about $500 Billion over the next 10 years. We spend that much on Defense every single year. But to even suggest that perhaps we should cut down on F-22 fighters or Aircraft carriers or perhaps maybe we should stop spending as much on our military as all of the rest of the world combined (it's true, we do), would make him look "Soft on Defense". But that's dumb. It's giving into stupid Populist rhetoric.
Similarly dumb were his stances on a "bi-partisan commission" to cut the deficit. Yglesias has more here: http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/12/the-looming-deficit-commission.php
Similarly, I'm not sure that he was talking about when he talked about the need to increase exports. I mean, that may be true, but what is his proposal? Typically I think these things would work out through free trade agreements, which he kind of alluded to when he said we should sign such agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and.. what was it, Panama? But would such agreements really double exports? I'm skeptical that such a plan could be carried out in a way that worked well. If he were going to change agricultural policy, I'd be far more interested in him focusing on cutting out stupid corn subsidies and sugar import quotas than I am about him increasing exports.
And there are some other small potatoes in there. Like when he talks about raising the child income tax credit, he means he'll raise the credit but make it non-refundable (which means it wouldn't apply to poor people who don't pay that much in taxes).
For the big things though, I thought he did a great job. He highlighted that a lot of the really important stuff has gone through the house but stalled in the Senate, and called the Republican leadership out on their stonewalling. He was stern on the need to pass health care (even if the Senate version has a lot of weird provisions in it). He re-iterated his stance on opposing DADT (although he still hasn't taken a stance on DOMA, which is unfortunate). He talked about transportation infrastructure and the need to pass the cap-and-trade legislation (which I'm a huuuuuuuge fan of).
At the same time though, I'm wondering how realistic some of this stuff can be. I mean, even though most of the components of health care were fantastic ideas, it barely passed in the Senate. Same with the Stimulus package. And now that the Democrats only have 59 seats, they're already saying that they can't re-pass health care through the Senate again. If the Republicans keep up their strategy of just stonewalling everything that comes through a) nothing will get done and b) sadly, the republicans will pick up seats in November. Really the problem that Obama is facing is structural, and until he calls for (and gets popular support behind) the idea of ending the filibuster, the Senate isn't going to change and a lot of these great ideas won't come to pass. And indeed, Nate Silver's current Senate predictions put the Dems at controlling about 53 seats in the Senate in January, so these things will be even harder in the future!
Well, there's a couple of reactions I have to the speech - silly and substitutive. So first, the silly style analysis! I guess I should start with the negatives. I thought that there were a lot of really expected cliches that are expected, but still kind of dumb (i.e. the "Wall Street. vs. Main Street" dichotomy, "People are tightening their belts around the dinner table, so the government should tighten its belt too!"). These kind of made me want to die. Discounting these, I thought that stylistically it was very different than any state of the union address I've seen. It kind of blended the overpowering Obama rhetoric we're used to hearing with some concreteness. So there was a lot Typically when I've seen these kinds of speeches, the President only makes vague references to the actual people in the room. If there's applause, they're supposed to ignore it. Obama, by contrast, seemed to be talking directly at the congressmen. When he mentioned Tax cuts and the Republicans didn't give a standing ovation, he actually said something like "Well I thought I'd get applause from THAT!". When he first mentioned Michelle and she got an ovation for the Health Obesidy thing, he explained her somewhat tense expression with "she gets embarrassed..."
At the same time, this kind of somewhat humble or "concrete" presence stood out when talking about his initiatives. He addressed failings from both parties in a very direct way. And by the end of the night he got a lot heavier. It's like he was slowly drawing the audience in.
Substantively, I'll start with the negatives. You know, in a recent interview with Dianne Sawyer, he said that over the past year he's "lost touch" with the American people, and that he'd been listening "too much" about policy from technocrats. As a technocrat, this offends me! I see a lot of really dumb populist touches (that I was kind of expecting) in this speech. He talks about a spending freeze (which is one of those things that people who haven't studied any economics tend to go for but is actually not a very good idea at all). I mean really, we don't know that we're going to be out of a recession in a year, and assuming that we are, then spending will inherently drop. If we aren't, then a spending freeze will make the situation worse. So it's either a completely ineffective policy or a counter productive one. Moreover, he talked about a spending freeze that leaves Medicare, Social Security, and Defense alone. Now keep in mind, I like these programs, but either one of the versions of the health care bill would run about $500 Billion over the next 10 years. We spend that much on Defense every single year. But to even suggest that perhaps we should cut down on F-22 fighters or Aircraft carriers or perhaps maybe we should stop spending as much on our military as all of the rest of the world combined (it's true, we do), would make him look "Soft on Defense". But that's dumb. It's giving into stupid Populist rhetoric.
Similarly dumb were his stances on a "bi-partisan commission" to cut the deficit. Yglesias has more here: http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/12/the-looming-deficit-commission.php
Similarly, I'm not sure that he was talking about when he talked about the need to increase exports. I mean, that may be true, but what is his proposal? Typically I think these things would work out through free trade agreements, which he kind of alluded to when he said we should sign such agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and.. what was it, Panama? But would such agreements really double exports? I'm skeptical that such a plan could be carried out in a way that worked well. If he were going to change agricultural policy, I'd be far more interested in him focusing on cutting out stupid corn subsidies and sugar import quotas than I am about him increasing exports.
And there are some other small potatoes in there. Like when he talks about raising the child income tax credit, he means he'll raise the credit but make it non-refundable (which means it wouldn't apply to poor people who don't pay that much in taxes).
For the big things though, I thought he did a great job. He highlighted that a lot of the really important stuff has gone through the house but stalled in the Senate, and called the Republican leadership out on their stonewalling. He was stern on the need to pass health care (even if the Senate version has a lot of weird provisions in it). He re-iterated his stance on opposing DADT (although he still hasn't taken a stance on DOMA, which is unfortunate). He talked about transportation infrastructure and the need to pass the cap-and-trade legislation (which I'm a huuuuuuuge fan of).
At the same time though, I'm wondering how realistic some of this stuff can be. I mean, even though most of the components of health care were fantastic ideas, it barely passed in the Senate. Same with the Stimulus package. And now that the Democrats only have 59 seats, they're already saying that they can't re-pass health care through the Senate again. If the Republicans keep up their strategy of just stonewalling everything that comes through a) nothing will get done and b) sadly, the republicans will pick up seats in November. Really the problem that Obama is facing is structural, and until he calls for (and gets popular support behind) the idea of ending the filibuster, the Senate isn't going to change and a lot of these great ideas won't come to pass. And indeed, Nate Silver's current Senate predictions put the Dems at controlling about 53 seats in the Senate in January, so these things will be even harder in the future!