I didn’t watch Obma’s speech last night. Fortunately, I was busy doing other—and more pleasant—things.
But from the reports I see, I don’t think anyone was pleased with it, left or right, with the exception of a few of the president’s most partisan shills. Joe Biden used it as an opportunity to get some shuteye. Clive Crook thinks Obama’s speech was a pitiful waste of breath.
In his speech, Obama abandoned any temporary pretense of bipartisan rhetoric and indulged in his tried-and-true Bush/Republicans bashing mixed with a liberal helping of class warfare. Perry Bacon at the WaPo certainly noticed the intense partisanship:
In the speech, he used as many words to attack the GOP proposal as to lay out his own…
Even as he savaged the GOP proposal, Obama was less than specific about his own. He did not say exactly how he would reform how corporations are taxed, what he would do to achieve a simpler tax system or which defense programs he would cut. On Social Security, he not only didn’t announce a proposal but would not say whether one was likely to be included in the final legislation.
And Obama, who rarely personally interjected himself into the negotiations on the federal budget over the past two weeks, seems prepared to play a similar role on the deficit: He announced that a group of 16 members of Congress and Vice President Biden would negotiate over the legislation, allowing the president to remain out of the day-to-day politicking on the issue.
This is Obama’s m.o. as we have come to know it, from the time of his campaign for president: blame the Republicans and distort and demonize their stand, then remain vague about what you’re proposing as an alternative. As Fred Barnes puts it, Obama didn’t rise to the occasion; he sank.
That doesn’t mean that at the end of the day he won’t come out ahead in this series of negotiations. I don’t think most people listened to the speech, but many more will pay attention to the final result, or at least their perception of the final result. Obama is counting on Republicans being scattered and weakened by fighting among themselves . And he may indeed be correct on that score.
[NOTE: Obama also indulged in another of his favorite pastimes, dissing those present at the speech without their being able to answer back. Talk about captive audiences! In earlier speeches it was the conservative Supreme Court justices; this time it was Rep. Paul Ryan. As Jim Geraghty points out:
Perhaps one of the reasons Obama loves the setting of the grandiose national address is that there is rarely a rebuttal. Any interruption to dispute the facts ”” like, say, Rep. Joe Wilson yelling out, “You LIE!” during an address to Congress ”” comes across as rude to the office of the presidency. The Supreme Court is completely unused to being criticized to their faces; members of Congress are used to the back-and-forth of debates on the floor in which every accusation and assertion can be rebutted and cross-examined.
I’m reminded of Saul Alinsky’s Third Rule: Wherever possible, go outside of the experience of your enemy.
Obama is, among other things, a petty bully and a demagogue who seems to get off on inviting his enemies to a front seat (literally) and then making them squirm.
And here, in case you want it, is a more sober analysis of the Ryan plan.]
