Initial Reactions to President Obama's State of the Union Address

I just got done "live-tweeting" during President Obama's first State of the Union Address and am going to give my initial reactions to the speech.

First and foremost I thought that this speech was what President Obama needed to do politically and ended up delivering a strong overall speech that will probably give him a slight boost in the polls. I don't like to dwell on or get lost in the political accomplishments of the speech because I think it can dilute from the overall substance of what was said.

On substance, Obama had a lot to tackle and if you missed the speech, you can read it here. Obama talked about a top priority of creating jobs in 2010:

We should start where most new jobs do - in small businesses, companies that begin when an entrepreneur takes a chance on a dream, or a worker decides its time she became her own boss.

Through sheer grit and determination, these companies have weathered the recession and are ready to grow. But when you talk to small business owners in places like Allentown, Pennsylvania or Elyria, Ohio, you find out that even though banks on Wall Street are lending again, they are mostly lending to bigger companies. But financing remains difficult for small business owners across the country.

So tonight, I'm proposing that we take $30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid and use it to help community banks give small businesses the credit they need to stay afloat.

He went on to talk about energy, the climate and the need to make America more innovative on a global scale. His remarks on Health Care were much much anticipated and here is a clip of what he had to say:

Our approach would preserve the right of Americans who have insurance to keep their doctor and their plan. It would reduce costs and premiums for millions of families and businesses. And according to the Congressional Budget Office - the independent organization that both parties have cited as the official scorekeeper for Congress - our approach would bring down the deficit by as much as $1 trillion over the next two decades.

Still, this is a complex issue, and the longer it was debated, the more skeptical people became. I take my share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people. And I know that with all the lobbying and horse-trading, this process left most Americans wondering what's in it for them.

But I also know this problem is not going away. By the time I'm finished speaking tonight, more Americans will have lost their health insurance. Millions will lose it this year. Our deficit will grow. Premiums will go up. Patients will be denied the care they need. Small business owners will continue to drop coverage altogether. I will not walk away from these Americans, and neither should the people in this chamber.

and frankly, there was not much more on the topic of health care reform than that. Obama simply put out a call for those in Congress to pass the reforms because they had come too far already. This really leaves us no closer to actually making Congress fix the current version of the bill and Obama did not mention anything about putting things like the public option back into the bill.

A couple of other notable moments from the speech:

1. Obama called for the repeal of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. This is certainly overdue and I know that many gay activists were very happy that Obama explicitly referenced this during the speech.

2. Obama chided the recent Supreme Court decision that will end up allowing a tidal wave of corporate money into political campaigns. The interesting part came when Justice Sam Alito reacted and verbally responded (what looked like and what is being reported as) "That's not true". Watch:



This is notable because the Supreme Court is usually silent and expressionless during the State of the Union, even refraining from clapping when the President enters so as to continue to express impartiality. Many have already stated that this is Alito's "You Lie" moment.

3. Obama explicitly stated that troops would begin to come home from Afghanistan in July 2011 and that "all combat troops" will be out of Iraq by August 2010. Earlier this week I highlighted the confusion within the Obama Administration surrounding his Afghanistan policy and while Obama reiterated this date, he failed to lay out any specifics regarding an exit strategy or whether this withdrawal is condition-based. More is needed on this topic from the Administration.

4. Obama addressed the partisanship that has plagued his first year in office, at times sounding like a high school principal. For me, the best line during this portion of the speech was:

To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve some problems, not run for the hills. And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that sixty votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it's not leadership.

Nice thought right? Something tells me that tomorrow is going to be the same.

These are my very raw and very rough reactions to the speech and there will be much further discussion on this over the next few days and weeks. Check back for more insight and analysis.


UPDATE: One more item that just came to mind was Obama seemingly denouncing the brand of conservatism that we saw under the Bush Administration:

From some on the right, I expect we'll hear a different argument - that if we just make fewer investments in our people, extend tax cuts for wealthier Americans, eliminate more regulations, and maintain the status quo on health care, our deficits will go away. The problem is, that's what we did for eight years. That's what helped lead us into this crisis. It's what helped lead to these deficits. And we cannot do it again.

I think this was important, but it makes me wonder why he is validating Republican views by calling for a spending freeze if he is so critical of what got us into this mess in the first place.

Around the Horn: Reaction to President Obama's Escalation Speech

Here are some reactions from around the blogosphere to last night's Presidential address where President Obama announced that he would be escalating the war in Afghanistan:

Richard at Hyscience:

"Stupid, immoral, worthless, self-absorbed non-strategy for his own political gratification." Yep, that about sums it all up perfectly.

And to think that America actually elected this Marxist and a Congress just like him. Is this the "change we had waited for"?

Jarrett Rush of the Dallas Morning News blog:

...he will be sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan on an accelerated timetable he will be doing it from West Point with, no doubt, troops as the backdrop. Does that bother anyone else, because it doesn't sit right with me.

The idea has felt weird since I heard about it, but I didn't want to knee-jerk and criticize the president just because he and I don't see eye to eye on much. But after considering it more, a policy decision like this needs to be announced from the White House with just the president. He's sending thousands of troops into harms way and using them as props on a stage is bad form.

Matt Armstrong at MountainRunner:

A successful strategy must empower the Afghan people against their oppressors. This means providing assistance directed “against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos” in order to “permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist” without which “there can be no political stability and no assured peace.” Success pivoted on whether the locals felt self-empowered and secure. Its value lay “not so much in its direct economic effects, which are difficult to calculate with any degree of accuracy, as in its psychological political by-products.” These statements, originally from 1947 by George C. Marshall and George Kennan, are timeless and just as applicable today to Afghanistan.

desmoinsdem at Bleeding Heartland:

Raise your hand if you believe that a surge in Afghanistan is going to stabilize that country and allow us to bring our troops home sooner. I doubt escalating our involvement will solve any problems in the region or make us safer. In particular, it won't address various security issues related to Pakistan.

After seeing how Obama kept a bunch of Republicans on at the Pentagon and then heeded their advice on Afghanistan, I have become more convinced that he would not have voted against the original resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq if he had been in the Senate at that time. He has not bucked the beltway conventional wisdom on any security issue.

Kevin Beck at Transmillennial:

War begets war. Always. Every time. No exceptions.

Escalating the war in hope of ending the war seems like a rational policy only if you believe violence can result in peace. Perhaps a greater presence can bring some stability, but when generating the habit energy of warfare only increases the possibility of more violence.

Around the Horn: Reactions to Obama's Health Care Address

Opinions from around the blogosphere:

Jane Hamsher:

The President did a great job last night on selling the country on the need for health care reform. He made the moral case, and every metric indicates that people were overwhelmingly moved to support his plan. That's the good news for the White House.

The not so good news: the White House has been trying to get out from under the burden of supporting the public option for weeks. The trouble is, every time they try to do it, the President's numbers take a huge hit. And so last night he came out and indicated that a public plan would be a part of his reform package.

Nick Morgan of Public Words Inc.:

Last night, President Obama proved that he is still the master of rhetoric we saw during the campaign by delivering his first unambiguously excellent speech since those halcyon days on the stump.

[...]

One good speech rarely ends discussion and there is still much legislative work to be done. But the President accomplished as much as an address of this kind can, and his remarks deserve to be treated with the dignity and respect he showed all the other serious participants in the health care debate. It was an excellent speech.

Todd Gitlin at TPM:

He sounded like a winner. Like all great preachers, he started methodically and built to crescendos. The Republican responder, Charles Boustany of Louisiana, sounded like a whiner, crying, Deficit, deficit, and government-run, government-run, and built toward nothing. Obama charged the Republicans with specific lies. He made the obligatory gestures toward bipartisanship, including the unexpected shout-out to John McCain, who had campaigned in favor of mandatory catastrophic insurance--and I don't want to be cynical about those gestures, even though I think he's naive about the other party's intentions--but that's not where his stresses fell.

Brad Hicks at "The Infamous Brad":

To be honest, I had a hard time paying attention to anything President Obama said Wednesday night after he said this, let alone taking him seriously on the subject.

[...]

Contrary to what he claims, the reason that medical expenses in the US are skyrocketing is not inefficiency and waste. Nor, contrary to what the Republicans are claiming, is it malpractice insurance; this was solved at the state level two years ago, and malpractice insurance rates are down across the board. The main reason that health care costs have skyrocketed is honest-to-gods scarcity. And that scarcity is entirely artificial. And his approach does nothing to address the artificial scarcity of doctors, or the artificial scarcity of newly (wrongly) patented drugs. And the other reason why health care costs have skyrocketed is flagrantly corrupt profiteering in both the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Matt Welch at Reason Online:

It is telling that so many people who claim to be speaking on the side of Truth, Justice, and the American Way of Journalism have consistently focused their outrage-o-meters at individual townhall attendees, political broadcast entertainers, and the lesser lights of a lame (if resurgent-by-default) opposition party, while letting walk nearly fact-check-free the non-irrelevant occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. If calling out lies and misrepresentations about a significant policy proposal is such pressing journalistic business—and it should be!—you'd think the watchdogs might start with the guy doing the proposing.

[...]

There was one line in the speech last night that pointed to an alternative, more promising future: "My guiding principle," Obama said, "is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition." Unfortunately, the president evinces zero understanding of how increased regulation can reduce consumer choice, even or especially when the government joins the competition. And even if he did see the connection, we'd have good reason to suspect that he wouldn't talk about it openly with the American people. That, ultimately, worries me more than a senior citizen who wants to keep the government out of Medicare.