President Obama State of the Union sets stage for campaign, sidesteps substance

State of the Union addresses are viewed by many as among the lowest forms of public discourse. They are grandiose (why Gingrich wants in), thick with oodles of empty applause, and laden with DOA policy proposals. This is doubly true of re-election years, when the speech serves as a campaign infomercial. Anyone who approaches a SOTU looking for more than rhetoric will be disappointed.

As an historical note, much of the grandstanding can be laid at the feet of Woodrow Wilson, who broke a tradition reaching back to Thomas Jefferson of submitting the State of the Union in written form.

President Obama’s SOTU speech Tuesday night did signal his reelection themes, centering on tax “fairness” and a strong push for activist government, followed by a reluctant and wholly inadequate nod to the looming debt and entitlement crisis.

Slate’s Steven Kornacki called it “the 99 percent speech,” with the president proving “he’s intent on pursuing a far more combative and populist path to a second term than the one Clinton followed.”

Many observers thought the speech avoided the key dilemmas facing the country. A Washington Post editorial approved of the tax fairness direction, but objected that Obama “slighted the threat that the federal deficit poses to the growth he said he wants,” noting that he did “not go beyond a rhetorical nod to the issue.”

Nile Gardner at the UK’s Daily Telegraph notes that the words “freedom and liberty” were oddly lacking, adding, “This should have been a serious speech addressing the economic problems facing the United States. Instead it was a laundry list of half-baked proposals designed to appease the Left.”

At Time, Mark Halperin saw the speech as “clearly poll tested to within an inch of its life, filled with programs and themes of broad appeal running from the left to the center right,” while at Newsweek Howard Kurz called it a “laundry list speech” in which Obama tried to rekindle the magic of 2008, but “the bar may have been impossible to clear. Three years into an ailing economy, words are no longer enough.”

Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Post saw the speech as “meager” on policy substance: “Yes, he asked for tax reform and breaks for manufacturing companies, but presented no plan of his own.” (Of course, the president approached what we now call Obamacare with precisely this sort of detachment.)