Thread: State of the Union: Obama's big campaign speech

State of the Union: Obama's big campaign speech


In this Jan. 25, 2011 file photo, President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address at the Capitol. | AP Photo

Barack Obama's speech will be the most important political event of the year thus far. | AP Photo
By CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN and GLENN THRUSH | 1/23/12 4:33 AM EST

The Republican candidates, who have reveled in the spotlight and battered Barack Obama for months, are about to get a sharp lesson in the power of the presidency.

The most important 2012 campaign event so far — and almost certainly the most important until the party’s national conventions this summer — will take place Tuesday night under the guise of a governing ritual.

It is hardly a shock to say that the State of the Union address — which has drawn audiences of 43 million to 52 million viewers in the Obama years, crushing any of the recent GOP candidate debates — will be a political affair. Every State of the Union address of modern times has been, in its own way, thoroughly political.

But Obama will appear on Capitol Hill as a president who is virtually wiping out the space — never wide to begin with — between politicking and governing in the West Wing as Election Day nears.

It is a strategy of necessity, Obama believes. He ran for president in 2008 decrying Washington’s climate of hyperpartisanship. Yet months of halting and mostly failed efforts in 2011 to craft bargains with Republicans on the budget leave the president, as his aides see it, with little choice but to make 2012 a year of drawing sharp contrasts with his rivals.

If there are deals to be cut, by this logic, they will come only if Obama wins a second term and greets a chastened opposition in 2013. In the meantime, nearly every aspect of daily life in his West Wing is influenced by a campaign mentality — never mind press secretary Jay Carney’s regular scolding of White House reporters to stop viewing everything the president does “through the prism of politics.”

Obama and his top aides hold regular calls with campaign staff in Chicago, and it shows. The White House timed the recess appointment of a new consumer watchdog to counter the Iowa caucuses and a jobs summit to bookend the New Hampshire primary. At that summit, he singled out four swing states — Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina and Ohio — as places that could benefit from his manufacturing policies. Obama raised millions of dollars at nine fundraisers in the past two weeks alone.

The president gave the first detailed look at Tuesday’s address in a video message Saturday dispatched through his campaign, not the White House, which is usually the origin for previews. Immediately after the speech, he will barnstorm five states that figure prominently in the campaign’s playbook for reaching 270 electoral votes: Iowa, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Michigan.

The address itself — second only to his nominating speech at the Democratic National Convention in terms of audience — can be viewed, in many ways, as an extended response to relentless attacks on him by the Republican field and their super PACS. But Obama clearly is groping for something more grandiose — to borrow a phrase from Newt Gingrich — an overarching class-struggle theme for a president running with a hobbled economy, low poll ratings and a mixed record, at best, on job creation.

“We can go in two directions,” Obama said in the campaign video. “One is toward less opportunity and less fairness. Or we can fight for where I think we need to go: building an economy that works for everyone, not just a wealthy few.”

The dangers of appearing too political are especially acute for this president. Obama, who ran on a platform of transcending politics as usual, must at least appear committed to finding bipartisan solutions within the current system, even though his actions signal he’s mostly given that up. Plus, he still needs to cut budget deals, along with tax cuts and unemployment insurance extensions.

Read more: State of the Union: Obama's big campaign speech - Carrie Budoff Brown and Glenn Thrush - POLITICO.com

Bush did it, blah, blah blah, It's the Republicans' fault, blah, blah. Fairness, blah, blah. Tax the rich, blah, blah. We can't wait, blah, blah.

Did I get it right?

Originally Posted by ReggieMay

Bush did it, blah, blah blah, It's the Republicans' fault, blah, blah. Fairness, blah, blah. Tax the rich, blah, blah. We can't wait, blah, blah.

Did I get it right?

Yup, yup, yup....