SOTU: Obama the centrist
I have little doubt which Obama will be on display tonight in the SOTU speech.
Gone is the crusading leftist. He went as far as he could in that direction, and the American people wised up to his act. Now, another role’s in order.
It’s not a new role, either. It’s one we’ve already seen a great deal of, the one Obama first played for the American people, beginning with his speech at the Democratic convention in 2004, and then polished to a fine luster during the 2007 and 2008 campaign. It’s Obama the moderate conciliator, the bipartisan compromiser, the rational and capable one.
Deficit? Reduce it. Jobs? Focus like a laser on them. Compromise? His middle name. Spending? Never heard of it.
It will be a rhetorical performance. I’ve never been especially interested in rhetoric and performances from politicians, although I admire a fine phrase as well as the next person, perhaps more. I’m primarily interested in action, and as far as I’m concerned Obama has revealed his true self by his actions during the past two years.
He is not interested in any of these things or he would have shown us by now. But in fact he’s shown us the opposite. If he is now co-opting the Republican agenda to some extent it’s because the election of 2010 gave him no choice but to fight them tooth and nail and lose in 2012 (even to the dread Palin, should she be nominated), or to appear to capitulate and get that old-time fiscal restraint religion. After 2012, he can always pivot back again—this guy’s a regular corkscrew—if Congress should become more Democratic and favorable to his original agenda.
If the American people buy this current transformation—which they might—and re-elect him in 2012, well then it’ll just be too bad, won’t it. As DaTechGuy writes:
It’s clear that this is the template that the White House/Democratic Party/MSM has embraced to prepare the ground for 2012 but in a world where social networks allow us to bypass these sources, can they convince the public to buy it?
If we do, or if we don’t, we will get the government we deserve.
I can’t predict what the public will do in 2012. It’s too far away, and way too many things can and will happen. But I do believe the answer to the question of whether the public will buy it depends on what will actually happen (especially economically), not the narrative du jour—and on who the public decides to blame or credit for those events: the Republicans in the House, or Obama in the White House.
I heard Rush Limbaugh call it the “State of the Union Show” instead of “speech”. That about sums it up.
Funny how nobody told Bush he had to stop tacking hard right after his party suffered far worse losses in 2006: http://firedoglake.com/2011/01/25/flashback-not-even-the-slightest-hint-of-a-move-to-the-center-in-george-w-bushs-2007-state-of-the-union/
But I guess if you get all your news from people who really think (or want you to think) the Chinese song “My Motherland really does diss America by name (hint: it doesn’t), then no wonder you might think that.
According to the advance releases on the content of the SOTU, he will be pushing for new investments, in education, infrastructure, whatever. His old investments were nothing more than naked spending and even he confessed that there are no shovel ready projects on which to lavish this largesse. He’s a liberal, true blue, and unable to “feel your pain” like the first Black President. He won’t be able to stop himself from trying to implement his agenda and he will be fooling fewer and fewer of us as he tries to navigate his last two years in office.
Who are these Americans at the 2 year mark who find Obama more favorable depending on what he says?
Do they buy two successive lemons from the same used car dealer, then with an irresistable sales pitch have to buy a third?
Do they loan their brother in law money he never pays back but admire how sincere he sounds every time he ask for it?
I have no idea how these folks are still alive into adulthood.
Obama is as Obama does, not what he says he will do. Unless he does a 180 on the role of government, he will continue to be what he has been, toast. Few taxpayers want more government “investment” for our future when we are broke today.
For all the Obama teams vaunted Political skills, they bungled badly in their relations with Congress, Industry and the American public. So have they truly wised up with Rahm and Alexrod’s departures? (and now Carol Browner etc.)
I don’t think so. Look at the burbling controversy of GE CEO Immelt replacing Paul Volker. Obama ignored Volker, but having a sitting (not ex CEO) of a company with large government business, recipient of bailout cash and extensive foreign operations as economic adviser is idiotic. Everytime GE breathes, someone will complain.
His leadfootedness with foreign leaders continues (See Hu!) With $90 to $100/bbl oil and debt issues with China, people will want some firmness at least from the Prez.
Nope rhetoric will not be enough
If Obama really does tack to the center, it might be the best thing to happen. That’s because it might induce kooks like Grayson, Kucinich, or Ralph Nadar to challenge him from the left. Then if he’s weakened by one or more of the kooks, a more serious candidate like Hillary might jump in from the center or Mark Warner might challenge him from the center-right. At that point, Obama’s likely a one-termer. No president going back to LBJ has ever won re-election when he’s been primaried.
LBJ was primaried by McCarthy. LBJ dropped out after the NH primary. Humphey got the nomination, and lost to Nixon.
Reagan primaried Ford. Ford lost presidency to Carter.
Carter primaried by Kennedy. Carter loses to Reagan.
Bush 41 primaried by Buchanan, which induces Perot to run as independent. Bush loses presidency to Clinton.
The history of primarying sitting presidents in the past 50 years demonstrates it only serves to weaken the president.
Alan Grayson for President!!
I hope a small percentage of those favorables come from people who think that if they reward him for good behaviour, he will move in the right direction. If so, he won’t get their votes in 2012 unless he really does stop the rising of the oceans. I look forward to a big expiration-date campaign from conservative groups. Heaven knows there is enough material on the web. Whether it works will depend on the economy and employment.
BTW, I just saw on German Yahoo that Hillary told her Spanish counterpart that the US is still determined to close Guantanamo. Boy does this bunch of fools have its priorities screwed up!
I will not watch the reptilian Baraq tonight, or ever. I have great hopes for Ryan’s aftercounterpoint, and wish more of us could catch the good Michelle (Bachmann) as well.
I join Scott in his hope. It’s too bad Retched Ralph Nader is outa gas. A Greenie would be ideal.
Phoenix Woman
“Remember: the Republicans lost the 2006 midterms because of the public’s overwhelming disapproval on Iraq, and here Bush basically says, “So?”
This would be like Obama announcing a new, even larger stimulus, adding a public option to the Affordable [sic] Care Act, and reestablishing ACORN – while grabbing his crotch and telling the GOP they had to shut up and take it.”
That from the article you linked to. You, either intentionally or not, are making comparisons between 2006 and now that should not be conflated.
If people voted against Bush in the 2006 midterms because of Iraq, it wasn’t because of the war in general, it was because we were perceived as to be *losing* that war. Bush changed course and we won it (although it’s still not 100% in the bag yet). If at the time you gave people a choice to either pull out immediately from Iraq, or change tactics that will win the war, everyone but the “I hate America” Left would have chosen the new tactics.
In contrast, the shellacking of Obama in the 2010 mid term elections was because of a repudiation of the very governing philosophy of Barack Obama.
He has violated the unwritten social contract that Americans have with their govt. Americans want a certain limit of govt involvement in their lives and Obama has crossed that barrier like no one else in our recent lifetimes. He can’t just change a tactic and achieve the elusive goal that Americans want, like how Bush changed tactics to win the war. Obama has to fundamentally change his entire world view (accompanied with *tangible* changes) in order to get back in the good graces of a majority of Americans. Or if he doesn’t do that, he has to be adept enough to fool us with his soaring rhetoric that he convinces us that he’s changed his world view.
That’s why Bush didn’t have to tack to the left and why Obama does.
The speech after should be given by Stanley Kurtz.
“That’s why Bush didn’t have to tack to the left and why Obama does.”
I should clarify that sentence to:
“That’s why Bush didn’t have to tack to the left and why Obama must tack to the right”
In short, America wasn’t repudiating Bush’s core conservatism in 2006, but it DID repudiate Obama’s core liberalism in 2010.
suddenly, i can get any comment through the system
anyone other than me noticed that when there are important things to discuss, the censor system goes fritzy impinging and lessening the desire to discuss?
Tonight Obama will say five year spending freeze
tinyurl
com
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jan 2020 Obama announced a three year freeze
tinyurl
com
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[its taken me near ten tries just to put the above up!!!]
by the way..
that is history
and i am always saying to remember and study history and connect the dots.
but alas… everyone wants to forget the past so they can arm chair general the current situation and come across like some erudite elite…
heck… the left BANKS on the majority of people doing that. after all, if we cant remember even recent past, we certainly will not notice them moving things into place that happen in a time frame outside our short perceptions..
like geological time is not perceptible to us
if they move slow enough, we don’t see it.
i showed in the other thread that we are still implementing a plan that people warned everyone about in 1901…
5 generations slow enough?
how about this.. the same focus and attention and drive that built the cathedrals over 150 years for one of them, is what is building the future…
still think they are stupid, vapid, lack planning etc?
well this year, is being deemed the year of the beneficial crisis that will make the EU one country… so the bad is planned not a problem to the plan.
heck even van Jones is now dumb enough to elucidate that social justice is communism/fascism
[which isn’t to comforting as he has said in speeches he wants to connect the economy to the gulag. ie. us prisons for labor…]
heck.. Stalin, Mao, hither, Che, Castro, Kim jong il, pol pot, etc.. All were the leaders of various “cults of the same religion” (to paraphrase Dies – remember him?)
Gone is the crusading leftist.
Not gone. Just behind the curtain pulling the levers, confident that none of the main-stream media will fill the, er, paws of Toto.
He has good writers (he has probably fired the one who put in the Supreme Court insults last time unless that was Michelle) and since he has learned the same trick William Hurt talked about in Broadcast News of reading copy without doing a back-and-forth thing with his eyes the coverage of his speech will be positively fulsome in its praise of his eloquence.
Then he will go back to bankrupting the country and seeing that the government is strong only when bullying its own citizens.
Memo to Phoenix Woman: in Phoenix AZ they’re not dopey enough to get news of real happenings from Firedog Lake so you must be referring to the imaginary beast.
Funny how nobody told Bush he had to stop tacking hard right
Strange, Bush 43 never tacked hard right.
Ever.
That’s because it might induce kooks like Grayson, Kucinich, or Ralph Nadar to challenge him from the left.
Ok, everyone, repeat after me: The Won will not be primaried. None of the above want to be labeled as raaaaaaaaaaaaaacist! and will decline to run.
The only way The Won is not on the 2012 Democratic ticket is because he voluntarily withdraws his name. If that happens, expect 50% of the black voters to sit at home ’cause they’ll think he was forced out.
An Obama “tack to the center” in economic terms does not mean more friendliness to genuine capitalism but rather more emphasis on corporatism–crony capitalism–economic fascism.
Obama is not a classical socialist who wants the government to run economic enterprises directly and hence take responsibility for them. He is more than happy to dole out “investments” to politically-favored corporations, and he doesn’t mind these companies and their executives making money as long as they do what they are told.
What he utterly fails to understand is the whole concept of a market economy.
As you’re watching the SOTU tonight, think “SNL sketch”….
It will help the pain.
Obama will blather a few sentences about how important it is to control spending and reduce the deficit. Then the big BUT will issue forth and he’ll call for bipartisan approve of new programs (spending) for his pet projects to revive the economy. He’ll renew his crusade for developing a ‘green economy’. He’ll call for increased spending on education and job training to prepare the USA to compete in the global economy. He’ll warn congress that repeal of ‘health care reform’ will increase the deficit and left granny dead in the ditch for want of affordable medical care.
Sprinkled throughout his address will be his standard mantra that he inherited a mess left behind by Bush. He’ll claim his efforts so far have kept things from getting worse and have even turned the tide and a recovery is under way. He’ll promise to focus like a laser beam on jobs, jobs, jobs.
He will once more portray himself as the non-partisan messiah. He will promise to lead the way in healing the nation after the incident in Tucson. Legions of the willing to be fooled again will believe him.
The talking heads in the MSM will get tingles in their nether parts and swoon about how wonderful, intelligent, and magnanimous Obama is and how the public needs to worship him like a god. Any who disagree will be portrayed as violent, racist baby eating ghouls who seek to steal from the poor and give to the rich.
I for one will not be listening, I’ve heard it all before.
I got my feet dirty trying to tiptoe thru the firedoglake link so very thoughtfully provided by Phoenix Woman. Right under appeals to fund Pfc. Bradley Manning, the 2006/2010 election comparison starts with
“The 2006 midterms were a disaster of biblical proportions for the Bush administration and the Republican Party. They lost the House, the Senate, and a raft of governors’ mansions and state legislatures. It was much worse than the “shellacking” the Democrats took last November.”
So ’06 was much worse, huh?
Here are the #s:
HOUSE- in ’06 the Dems gained 33 seats; in ’10 Repubs gained 63 seats.
SENATE- in ’06, Dems gained 6 seats; in ’10, Repubs gained 6.
GOVERNORSHIPS: in ’06, Dems gained 6, for total of 28; in ’10, Repubs took 29.
Facts? You won’t find ’em on firedoglick.
I suggest we remind our friends of how the media carried water for the democrats with that whole “summer of recovery” baloney.
In reference to Phoenix Woman above, I’m trying to recall this “hard right” Bush. When it came to spending, I don’t recall the man ever pulling out his veto pen, with or without a republican congress I should add, 2003-2007 congress’ spending was only slightly less disgusting then what we’ve seen since. And it would appear that the current president agrees with Bush when it comes to things like Gitmo, Patriot Act, TSA, etc, etc, etc
“”Strange, Bush 43 never tacked hard right.””
Hard right nowadays is a balanced budget.
Sears Poncho:
There were a few things I liked about GWB and many things I didn’t like. He was not a fiscal conservative by a long shot. You are right, he never lifted his hand to veto the outrageous budgets loaded with lard that came to his desk. Like his father, he was all too willing to expand the reach of DC.
AND, lets not forget the horrible ‘no child left behind’ initiative that GWB and Teddy drown a bimbo Kennedy created. That said, I’d take 20 years of GWB over 2 years of BHO.
If you look hard enough, behind the new crony capitalism is a Nazi, under the “what we learned from Tuscon” is a Nazi, and everywhere and anywhere, you guessed it . . . a Nazi!
Nazis to the left of me, Nazis to the right. And here I am stuck in the middle with you. Nazi.
I propose, for one evening, every conservative commentator accuse Obama of being a Nazi. No reason. And hey, it just might work. After all, isn’t that what’s important? Results.
Who cares if a couple liberals get trashed on the way. No one will remember. No one will care!
We’ll coordinate this with a website called Nazilist. If everybody says it, it must be true. It won’t matter if the Nazilist becomes known, or if the charges aren’t true. What matters is our right to hope and change.
Parker:
I’m going to compare Obama’s SOTU speech between you prediction and that of Talkleft:
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2011/1/25/13310/2116
They’ve been right before repeatedly in the past, and I’m willing to bet they will be right this time as well.
Another interesting perspective for those who comment here to consider:
A warning and a quote.
The warning is there is some (though not every other word) not nice language for those of you who might be easily offended by such things.
The quote:
“There are many myths within the political blogosphere, but none is so deeply troubling or so highly treasured by mainstream political bloggers than this: that the political blogosphere contains within it the whole range of respectable political opinion, and that once an issue has been thoroughly debated therein, it has had a full and fair hearing. The truth is that almost anything resembling an actual left wing has been systematically written out of the conversation within the political blogosphere, both intentionally and not, while those writing within it congratulate themselves for having answered all left-wing criticism.
The post lead me to my own equally radical realization — he’s right.
Before the usual suspects start spluttering, “ARE YOU NUTS OBAMMUNIST DEATH PANELS PALIN/BACHMANN 2012!!!”, let me qualify that statement. It is socialism specifically that is dead. All of the other various hobbyhorses of the left — gay rights, multiculturalism, feminism — they’re alive and kicking. But economic Marxism, the historic core of the Western left-wing, is as dead as Marx himself. The only people who take it seriously anymore are high-IQ cranks like Robert Lindsay and recalcitrant old hippies like Alexander Cockburn. Most so-called leftists and liberals spout a softer version of neoliberal capitalism, and even supposedly socialist states like Sweden are functionally capitalist, albeit with more robust welfare states.
There’s a reason for this — economic leftism was totally discredited by the collapse of the Soviet Union twenty years ago…”
http://www.inmalafide.com/2011/01/24/the-rise-of-generation-zero-part-2-jenseits-von-links-und-rechts/
I’m listening to Mark Levin right now. He just said he got an advance copy of the text, and you’d better be prepared to stay up late if you want to watch it. Apparently it’s unbelievably long.
Leftists tend to make very long speeches. Castro in notorious for speaking for several hours at a time.
Hmm. I wonder if Obama is deliberately making it as long as possible so that most people will tune out before Ryan comes on.
I’m not concerned. I just bought the “Complete Definitive Collection” of Twilight Zone. A 28-DVD box set, with every episode of all five seasons. Granted, I’ve seen just about all of them on TV over the years (multiple times), but these are digital transfers from the original film negatives. When I watch them on my computer monitor, it’s like seeing them in high definition. It is high-definition. It’s way better than the original audience saw them on their 1959 black-and-white TV sets.
To make a long story short, I have no intention of subjecting myself to Obama’s narcissistic, lying blather.
I’m 63 years old. I’m old enough to have heard and comprehended SOTU speeches from JFK onwards. Its almost always a basket of bull excrement at best. LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Jimmy Peanut, Bush the 1st, and Clinton gave us nothing but worthless platitudes. Smoke and mirrors as usual. Placebos and kool-aid, with never even the merest whiff of a cure for what truly ails our nation.
Obama is no different, in fact he’s the worst in my lifetime. What good comes from listening to his blathering nonsense? What good comes from listening to his platitudes? What good comes from listening to his rhetoric and lies? All he does is confirm the disconnect between the elitists and the reality we the people live in our daily lives.
IMO, only Reagan’s SOTUs & GWB’s SOTU January, 2002 have been worth listening to. (GWB’s SOTU after 02 were also just a waste of oxygen IMO.)
We have to cease looking to DC for directions. The way forward is what we do in our local communities. The way forward is taking power back to our own communities. We, locally, decide how to educate our children & grandchildren. We decide who is worthy of our charity and who is not. I don’t trust DC to make the right decisions. I live in Iowa & I don’t trust Des Moines. The government that governs least governs best. Get your hands out of my pocket!
“I’m the one who has to die when its my time to die. So let me live my life the way I want to.” — Jimi Hendrix.
“Back off!” — Yosemite Sam
“I am what I am and thats all that I am.” — Popeye
BTW, I’m not interested in what my country can do for me. I’m interested in what I can do for myself, my family, my friends, and my community. I don’t need DC or Des Moines telling me how best spend my money.
Diatribe ended, pardon my rant.
I watched “One for the Angels” starring Ed Wynn, and “Mr. Denton on Doomsday” starring Dan Duryea. I’m in the middle of cooking dinner now, and while I’m eating it, I’ll watch “The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine” starring Ida Lupino.
Those are all episodes from the first season.
rickl: I loved that program. Loved it.
Come to think of it, that program started only a year or two after Sputnik (see addendum II here).