Via: Tuned In
The night started with a house on fire. Before Barack Obama‘s State of the Union address Tuesday, the cable news networks (and local news on the West Coast) broke into programming with coverage of the siege at a cabin in California where ex-cop/gunman Christopher Dorner had reportedly been holed up. For a while it looked as if they might split-screen coverage, as they once did the OJ Simpson civil trial verdict with Bill Clinton‘s 1997 State of the Union. The networks ended up cutting away before 9 pm Eastern, but it was a striking contrast: the hideout of a crazed gunman burning in the woods, just before the declaration that the State of the Union was “stronger.” Whether that assertion was true or not, the President’s confidence certainly seemed stronger. Newly re-elected to a second term, he continued the themes of his second inaugural address with a speech that argued for the role of an activist government–determined to make investments that he argued would pay off as the human genome research did–point by point by point. By point. By point. The bulk of the speech ran, like most State of the Unions nowadays, as a list of proposals and priorities the President would implement in an ideal world. Preschool, climate change, energy, cybersecurity, antiproliferation, closing tax loopholes, gay rights, an increase in the minimum wage. Some of the steps might be taken by the executive branch; the others would have to get past the Republican House and, thus, were highly theoretical. But he framed an argument for his policies in the language (if not the tone) of bipartisanship, repeating variations on the refrain “We know…” to position himself as the voice of consensus. (Or, more bluntly, to say “I won.”) Past experience shows that “laundry list” type SOTUs can be effective with the public, even if they don’t make for stirring rhetoric. But the only time it felt like Obama was giving an honest-to-God speech was in the final five minutes or so, beginning with a passionate call for gun
Read full story at: Tuned In
Posted: February 13th, 2013
Comments
No comments, be the first to add one below!
You must login to post a comment!