We have long known that Barack Obama can do the "vision thing." In this State of the Union address, though, he did the specific thing.
This president, who reportedly pores over every David Brooks column, rejected the Times man's elite advice and instead spoke directly to the guy who drives the truck that delivers the Times. Sorry to pick on Brooks, who is terribly nice and very bright and thoroughly decent. But his most recent column called for Mr. Obama not to address the economy "in the standard way," but rather "in a visionary way." The global economy, in Mr. Brooks' metaphor is "like the competition between elite universities, who vie for prestige in a networked search for knowledge."
As compelling as it may be to compare your brother-in-law's unemployment to Harvard bidding against Princeton for a top sociology prof, the president chose a different course. He dropped the airy-fairy visionary verbiage and talked turkey.
The president used the word "job" or "jobs" 30 times, and "competitive" just once. Hurray! He used commonsense metaphors (Sputnik was the exception) like saying that "cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. You may feel like you're flying high at first, but it won't take long before you'll feel the impact."
Critics will no doubt complain that the speech was a laundry list. But when you're feeling naked, clean laundry is a pretty useful thing. No one has ever walked up to me and said, "I need a visionary American competitiveness initiative." But lots of folks have told me, "I need a job."
In his State of the Union address, President Obama spoke directly to those people -- the ones Bill Clinton calls "walkin' around folks." I suspect a lot of those folks will be lining up to march behind the plainspoken, commonsense, practical leadership President Obama is offering.
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OK, look at the full moon. See that man there? That man in the moon? OK, now YOU'RE doing the Barack Obama "vision thing!"
Paul Begala is really a good Democrat and I enjoy his passionate defense on Cable . Apart from Gov Spitzer of CNN who has enough knowledge and guts to defend Democratic Policies, very few others can.and do.
I am tired of the constant criticism of President Obama , no matter what he does or says.
LET US MOVE ...............to WIN the FUTURE......or we will be sorry.
Let a nation go hungry and revolution takes place. Egypt and Tunisia passed their tipping points and their nation's civility broke. Why is it so hard to understand that we as a nation have a social contract to protect the poor and needy? It's a form of self preservation.
Once we allow the lowest to suffer, all of us could also suffer. Once we start losing our humanity and holding money over the dignity and well being of mankind we lose our souls. Continue pursuing the "Me First" culture the Tea Baggers are pushing and this nation will falter. We have weathered the greatest of depressions and wars by reaching out and helping everyone in the nation not just the rich few.
from now on I will try to always say PRESIDENT OBAMA............i think it sounds awfully DISrespectful to just say OBAMA.
After spending massive amounts on same social issues and not solving them; the "Left" has to stop raising govt expenditures on same programs addressing same old issues. There are other innovative ways that addresses those problems. We need wisdom to learn from our own past or from other countries if necessary; and courage to bust established entrenched groups. Much of social welfare, including foreign aid, are US corporate subsidies.
The "Right" has to realize military-might does not make us secure and at peace with ourselves. This includes fencing-ourselves and the massive internal security system. President Eisenhower alerted us to the Political-Military-Industrial complex. Things have only gotten worse since that warning.
Best humanity can sometimes do is cope and contain social issues without solving problems. With massive expenditures we are buying lots of band-aids, while underlying disease process gets worse.
Current Left-Right disagreements are the symptoms not solution. Leaders on both-sides need to spread the message to their own interest-groups that the gravy-train is over for ALL. Working Americans see 50% of their pay disappear as federal, state and municpal taxes.
Recently we see more and more of it. Just like the 2008 bank bailouts were masked by expressions of "concern for homeowners", the present day references to "jobs" are nothing but a veiled attempt to cement the hegemony of multi-national corporations in our public life.
There will not be any significant increases in jobs as long as we need to compete with cheap Asian labor. Everything else is just an empty rhetoric.
Unfortunately the near term solutions are politically unfeasible:
1. Regulate global trade
2. Increase taxes on the top bracket
The long term solution, re-educate the population would require significant investment.
Will China be willing to bankroll it?
You can have two rooms at very different temperatures, if they are well insulated. Once you open the door, the temperatures equalize.
Economically, free global trade is tantamount to opening the doors. We now cannot "expect" having significantly higher wages than the less developed world. Our leaders should address this problem and state clearly what they are going to do about it.
Bring in the "knowledge economy" (as Larry Summers sometimes claims)?
He clearly hasn't been to a public school recently.
No, they'd rather use a potential world-wide Depression for extortion than as a goad for greater action from their members to try to save their country.