Delayed Reaction to the State of the Union
It has taken me a while to assess my reaction to President Obama’s speech. On the whole, I think his supporters should be somewhat dismayed. It struck me as very effective in diagnosing problems, and in proposing policy solutions that – even though I disagree with many (but not all) of them – are well-reasoned and might plausibly succeed; but as far as I can see, he proposed no realistic solution to the political problem that he argued is at the heart of our inability to take useful action on these proposals.
At the highest level, Obama was precise about the central problem of our political economy: dealing with the current phase of democratic capitalism, characterized by the race between technology and skills, and the challenges of globalization. After reviewing how his administration has addressed the challenges of the past year, he came to what I think is the core of his diagnosis and proposals. He started with a statement of the problem:
From the day I took office, I’ve been told that addressing our larger challenges is too ambitious; such an effort would be too contentious. I’ve been told that our political system is too gridlocked, and that we should just put things on hold for a while.
For those who make these claims, I have one simple question: How long should we wait? How long should America put its future on hold? (Applause.)
You see, Washington has been telling us to wait for decades, even as the problems have grown worse. Meanwhile, China is not waiting to revamp its economy. Germany is not waiting. India is not waiting. These nations — they’re not standing still. These nations aren’t playing for second place. They’re putting more emphasis on math and science. They’re rebuilding their infrastructure. They’re making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs. Well, I do not accept second place for the United States of America. (Applause.)
As hard as it may be, as uncomfortable and contentious as the debates may become, it’s time to get serious about fixing the problems that are hampering our growth.
He then went on to lay out his proposals:
Now, one place to start is serious financial reform. … Next, we need to encourage American innovation. …Third, we need to export more of our goods. …Fourth, we need to invest in the skills and education of our people.
Now, I disagree with many (but not all) of the specifics of how the President proposed to deal with these items (e.g., encouraging innovation via government direction of resources, educational improvement through greater central allocation of resources, etc.). But he described the challenge (“These nations aren’t playing for second place.”), and broke this down into the core areas that must be addressed to meet this challenge, in terms that I find to be extremely compelling.
The obvious question to be addressed was why we have had so little tangible progress in Washington against these problems during the first year of his presidency. His theory, referenced in the passage above, is that “gridlock” has prevented this. He argued, implicitly but clearly, that members of the government are not putting the general welfare ahead of individual and factional interests. He returned to this over and again:
But what frustrates the American people is a Washington where every day is Election Day. We can’t wage a perpetual campaign where the only goal is to see who can get the most embarrassing headlines about the other side — a belief that if you lose, I win. Neither party should delay or obstruct every single bill just because they can. The confirmation of — (applause) — I’m speaking to both parties now. The confirmation of well-qualified public servants shouldn’t be held hostage to the pet projects or grudges of a few individual senators. (Applause.)
Washington may think that saying anything about the other side, no matter how false, no matter how malicious, is just part of the game. But it’s precisely such politics that has stopped either party from helping the American people. Worse yet, it’s sowing further division among our citizens, further distrust in our government.
So, no, I will not give up on trying to change the tone of our politics. I know it’s an election year. And after last week, it’s clear that campaign fever has come even earlier than usual. But we still need to govern.
In this speech, then, he traced a theory all the way from observable problem through a sequence of asserted causation down to a root cause: a political class that refuses to do its job. Later, in what I (and probably only I) found to be the most moving part of the speech he put it this way:
Those of us in public office can respond to this reality by playing it safe and avoid telling hard truths and pointing fingers. We can do what’s necessary to keep our poll numbers high, and get through the next election instead of doing what’s best for the next generation.
But I also know this: If people had made that decision 50 years ago, or 100 years ago, or 200 years ago, we wouldn’t be here tonight. The only reason we are here is because generations of Americans were unafraid to do what was hard; to do what was needed even when success was uncertain; to do what it took to keep the dream of this nation alive for their children and their grandchildren.
Go back and look at video. There is no more clapping, laughter and mugging for the camera. All you see is a bunch of people silently squirming in their seats. He is calling them out, and they know it.
And then, as the listener waits for him to come out swinging – to tell us what he proposes that we actually do to meet the political problem he has identified – he retreated back to more letter reading about the struggles of ordinary Americans. He flinched from proposing a solution to the problem he asserts is at the root of the important issues facing the country.
There are only two possibilities: either he is basically right that that lack of fidelity to the public good by the political class is why he can’t get his policy proposals implemented into law, or he is not. If he is right, then asking everybody to play nice won’t, by definition, fix the problem. Proposing procedural reforms to lobbying and so forth (as the president did) won’t fix it, because such a political class would simply make sure that such reforms were Potemkin affairs that did nothing to address the root problem. If he is trying to go over the heads of Congress, and shame them in front of the American people, he has not come close to the depth, intensity and repetition of the criticisms he would need to make such a strategy work. But if is he is not right, then he has misidentified the problem. Either way he is stuck without a proposed course of action – which is where, at least in this speech, I think he found himself.
This is only a small nitpick — I agree with the general thrust of your post — but I think you’re not giving Obama enough credit on education. He’s basically embarked on the only strategy that can work politically, ie buying (with stimulus money) union and bureaucratic acquiescence to reforms that bring more flexibility and accountability to the classroom. To be sure, the reforms so far are small bore and incremental, but as we see how overreaching has stymied Obama in other areas, I’ll gladly take it.
Arne Duncan is an extremely impressive fellow, and while Obama has often allied himself with the left wing of his party (most worryingly on trade) on education he’s clearly put himself in the reformers camp and has been moving forward successfully. Therefore I find your characterization of his goal as “educational improvement through greater central allocation of resources” lacking.
(Again, a small nitpick as that’s not the thrust of your argument, but I felt that it had to be pointed out.)
— PEG · Jan 29, 04:44 PM · #
“…but as far as I can see, he proposed no realistic solution to the political problem that he argued is at the heart of our inability to take useful action on these proposals.”
Do you have one to propose? Change Senate rules on cloture, term limits, something more radical? I don’t necessarily disagree with you, but I’m wondering if he didn’t propose a solution because there isn’t one. How can the solution TO a broken political process emerge FROM a broken political process?
— Troy · Jan 29, 05:10 PM · #
The reason why Obama didn’t propose a way to resolve the problem of our decadent political eltites is that there’s no way HE can solve the problem.
If he attacks mindless GOP opposition, he only increases Democratic polarization.
If he attacks both GOP and Dem irresponsiblity, he will only increase his standing with the American people at the expense of being able to do anything of substance in domestic policy.
If Obama were still just a Senator, he would actually be more capable of being that one man who can summon the future (Star Trek reference). But as President, the responsiblity to manage the situation and get the best possible result is too overwhelming.
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 29, 05:11 PM · #
Oh please…His railing against “Washington” sounds like something from the campaign instead of the words of a president whose party has had control of both houses of Congress since 2007.
He IS “Washington”…how absurd to try and portray himself as some sort of lonely outsider-looking-in.
Both houses of congress…a compliant, even cheerleading media to cover up and excuse his every misstep….stratospheric approval numbers when he took office…his hand-picked guys running the show i.e. Geithner, a tax cheat…and what has he accomplished? Unemployment – 7.7% when he took office, during what he described (over and over and over) as “T.W.E.S.T.G.D.” (the worst economy since the great depression) – is now above 10% and in some states it is approaching 20%. So I guess the economy when Bush left office was NOT t.w.e.s.t.g.d because it’s sure as hell worse now. Housing sales falling, foreclosures increasing.
Nobody believes him anymore…he’s lied outight too many times for anyone without stars in their eyes to believe a word he says.
Oh and…does anyone know what he did with the $1.4m he got with the Nobel prize? Have you heard anyone in the media asking? Don’t you think if he was a Republican that this question would come up at every presser?
— tomaig · Jan 29, 05:23 PM · #
You write: ``There are only two possibilities: either he is basically right that that lack of fidelity to the public good by the political class is why he can’t get his policy proposals implemented into law, or he is not. If he is right, then asking everybody to play nice won’t, by definition, fix the problem.’‘
I don’t see how that last sentence is true by definition, and I also don’t think it’s what Obama was trying to do. In Aristotelean terms, Obama was chastising the Congress for their general lack of the virtues of a good politician — their failure to make the public interest a higher priority than private or factional interests. That is, the problem is the general lack of a virtuous character, and a prevalent vicious character, among the Congress. Now, one way you can cultivate a virtuous character is by slowly and gradually inculcating the virtues into someone as they grow from child to adult. Since Obama’s a little late for that, he’s using another tactic, appropriate for adults: compare the vicious person (those who wage a perpetual campaign where the only goal is to see who can get the most embarrassing headlines about the other side) to the virtuous person (those previous generations of Americans who were unafraid to do what was hard), and hope the vicious person realizes that they should get their act together.
Importantly, there are limits on the capacity of the vicious to cultivate the virtues. Sometimes people have lost sight of the good life so completely that there’s no hope of bringing them back. Short of declaring himself a dictator and purging the Congress of undesirables, Obama can’t do much more than nudge the Congress in the right direction and hope they get a clue. Maybe he could and should have made the public shaming a little more spectacular. (And I’d enjoy seeing Joseph Lieberman in the stocks for 24 hours, but then, I’m on the left.) Still, that’s a failure to vigorously pursue the best solution to the problem, not the much deeper failure of misidentifying the problem.
— Noumena · Jan 29, 06:17 PM · #
Jim, I didn’t have the heart to watch the speech. I knew I SHOULD watch it, but there simply was not a single bone in my body that desired to. And while I have felt something a bit akin to this feeling of aversion with previous presidents and their speeches, heightened always with SOTU speeches, I can say I’ve never felt it as strongly as I did this time.
It’s not exactly right with me to say, as tomaig does, that “no-one believes him anymore,” although I certainly believe him a less than I did a year ago, and lot less than I did prior to the Fall 08. Our President does tell us the truth, generally; even if, when the kids are out of the room, we all must admit that this one lies and dishonestly frames things more than any since Nixon.
With me, it’s more the sense that, with Obama, I have nothing more to learn, either about him, about contemporary progressivism(a topic I’m most interested in), or about most of the contemporary policy debates. I’ve done the academic’s political science bit in analyzing his speeches: the big one as senator about religion in politics, the big one about race after Wright, the general vision offered for America and a new Democratic majority in the campaign speeches…and almost always, what I’ve found is that what seems on the surface to contain profundity, prudent moderation, gravitas, intellectual interest, at bottom contains little of substance. It always turns out to be just so-so, just okay, just understandable politics as usual, just a well-turned phrase or framing of the issue, but never with any revelation of determined principles, be they right or wrong. Nor is there ever a genuinely moderate deed that lives up the apparently fierce moderation of the speeches.
What was Reaganism? What was Clinton’s New Democrat creed? What was Carter’s stance on human rights and democracy? Was Bush II really a Wilsonian of a new sort? These were questions that you could pursue in various speeches with profit, to say nothing of what you would learn about policy.
Initially, it seemed Obama would be, even more than these had been, a president who gave us opportunities to think and debate about the intellectual fundamentals and the nuts-and-bolts of running the country.
From reading Shelby Steele’s book and from the Rev. Wright episode onwards, however, I’ve deeply distrusted the man, and been truly dismayed by a certain NEUTRAL EMPTINESS that he cultivates.
And this year, well, the speeches have run one into another. And they tell me…generally nothing. He’s tactical, yes. He’s rather left, yes. He sincerely wants bipartisanship and change but doesn’t have much of plan outside of overwhelming Democratic majority and popular engergy to achieve these, yes. Here and there, he’s more sensible than most conservatives, but even there, it doesn’t seem like he is due to core principles—he just happens from time to time to get an issue more right than most conservatives.
I’m Obama-ed out. I can’t take the effort to analyze his speeches seriously anymore. At least for now. Nothing profound or orignial I’m saying here, but it is what it is.
— Carl Scott · Jan 29, 06:23 PM · #
The problem is structural, not idiosyncratic: not individual Congressmen, but what supervenes upon their logic of political survival.
I hate using hoity toity words, but the problem is our thrownness, our facticity. The sheer immutable complexity of our nunc fluens.
It’s hard to steer when you have a million little tug boats pushing and pulling at you. And the tug boats are us.
Our collective psychology will have to change phase if we hope to find the immense political capital it will take to cut the ropes and strafe the water. Unfortunately, I don’t see how you can manufacture a useful collective psychology without relying on Event, that is, without harnessing the apperception-shattering effect of a national or global crisis. Plus, opportunity is danger etc etc.
Now for the good news! Since we’re a democratic republic, the common good is not totally decoupled from the logic of political survival. A very large mercy, it seems to me, given the public and the leaders we’re stuck with. So there’s that.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jan 29, 06:34 PM · #
Obama’s options for dealing with this dysfunction are limited, but not zero. He could, for example, give recess appointments to all 200 or so people waiting on senate action.
Why doesn’t he? My guess is that a lot of Democratic senators as well as Republicans like having a stranglehold on the government, and he figures that if he faces uniform Republican obstructionism and then pisses off a lot of Democratic prima donnas also he won’t be able to get anything done.
So the bottom line is: we’re doomed.
— peter · Jan 29, 07:34 PM · #
“Our President does tell us the truth, generally; even if, when the kids are out of the room, we all must admit that this one lies and dishonestly frames things more than any since Nixon.”
Wait. You meant to say this two years ago about President Bush, right?
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 29, 07:44 PM · #
“From reading Shelby Steele’s book and from the Rev. Wright episode onwards, however, I’ve deeply distrusted the man”
And this would be the least surprising, most understandable thing you’ve ever written.
Mike
— MBunge · Jan 29, 07:46 PM · #
It is a bit depressing for supporters because despite everything there is not a damned thing to be done to change the trajectory here.
The period of time between TravelGate and Impeachment were pretty rough on Bill Clinton. But I don’t recall it being like this. I was talking to a conservative work friend and though we usually don’t talk politics he seemed to want to tell me (for whatever reason) his observations:
1. Constant din of Obama negativity in the media – Radio talk, TV, dead-tree newspapers, online. Literally everything he does, including going out to eat a burger, is wrong. Everything he says “is a lie.” Read the message boards on supposedly centrist or non political sites like Marketwatch or Politico. There is an unceasing cacaphony of complaints against things he has done, might do in the future but hasn’t done yet, hasn’t done, probably won’t do in the future but should, etc etc etc. He went to Dover…he hates the troops…he smirked…he’s too cool…not cool enough. Nothing the man does can make any difference to 40% of the US population. Nothing.
2. He gets it from both sides. The “furthest left president ever in the history of the republic” is pilloried by the left because he wont even include a weaksauce public option in a healthcare reform act – something that everyone knows nearly every developed country has. He didn’t nationalize the banks like the Swedes did. His stimulus was very small compared with the destruction of demand, and over a third of it was tax cuts. Neither the actions nor the words are what one would expect from a the greatest socialist threat to our way of life since Stalin. But that’s what he is, supposedly.
What gives? Is this the new pattern where so much money is spent and commitments made (2 wars, drug plan) by one party that the other party confined to a strait jacket? It’s a strategy, I suppose, but a winning one for the country?
— luko · Jan 29, 08:33 PM · #
Jim, last thought. Not saying your analysis of the speech’s basic contradiction isn’t worthwhile, and indeed, it’s well done and a point worth noticing…I’m just saying I’ve come to expect that sort of incoherence to the man’s rhetoric. Noticing it, or having it spelled out by yourself, it no longer makes my eyebrow go up one bit—the man’s speech has become a jumble of disconnected, mutually contradicting themes for me for some time. I don’t expect anything to hang together. I dislike my president, but I can’t even say I dislike my president because of what he stands for, since I cannot really see what it is. I think contemporary progressism, in many of its articulations, is ultimately or radically incoherent, but w/ Obama I don’t even feel I have a surface position to hang my basic criticisms on. Somehow he’s both uber-progressive and uber-nothing.
But it is of course proper to continue to take him at his word and analyze those words for what they mean, as you’re doing here. He’s the conservatives’ president too, and if he can learn anything from them, it may be from pieces like yours, Jim.
(And luko, we’re coming from different partisan angles, but you make a lot of sense. How pathetic it is when someone like Laura Ingrahm goes on about the damn hamburger trip! As for your positing basic structural reasons to explain the unhappiness Obama-the-promise-maker and America’s-perpetually-mistrustful-and-fickle-Independents find themselves in, I would suggest the blame lies more with him and with Progressivist premises, but it’s a worthwhile line of thought.)
— Carl Scott · Jan 29, 08:59 PM · #
“central problem of our political economy: dealing with the current phase of democratic capitalism, characterized by the race between technology and skills, and the challenges of globalization.”
That is not what he was talking about. He was mainly talking about using less fossil fuels for our energy and very little about upgrading worker skills. He thinks that government investment in cleaner energy will create jobs.
— Mercer · Jan 29, 10:07 PM · #
This is a very generous analysis of the speech. I thought it was the speech of someone who wants to be a moderate but doesn’t really have it in him — therefore, it was full of contradictions.
“their failure to make the public interest a higher priority than private or factional interests.”
The broader conflict which the Republicans are responding to, although disingenuosly in the way you describe, factional interests, is between public welfare and individual rights. Statism, in its varying degrees, has come down on the side of public welfare, while the opposition movement defends individual rights. The Republicans have sided with the opposition movement, not because they are defending individual rights, but because they believe the movement is big enough to help them regain power so they can resume violating individual rights from their side of the aisle. The only differene is a different group of people get violated.
— mike farmer · Jan 30, 01:29 AM · #
Do you think he is right that ‘lack of fidelity [etc.]’?
— B · Jan 30, 02:04 AM · #
Why not, say, the Democratic party platform? Don’t you think he’s for that, limited by the restrictions of what is politically viable?
I don’t get it, I guess. A year in and you don’t know what the President’s politics are? I don’t think that’s because he’s some kind of Protean changeling. I think it’s because you can’t possibly be arsed to pay attention.
— Chet · Jan 31, 02:20 AM · #
I was driving while listening to some of the speech and when he came to that part—the part you found moving—I suddenly found myself with tears in my eyes. It took me completely by surprise since I’m afraid I was listening with a hopeless, cynical attitude.
— Joules · Jan 31, 07:39 AM · #
I think you’re right. He might have been stuck without a proposed solution to the problem at hand. He knows that there is a problem but he has not found the right solution to it. And if he is proposing solutions, it’s usually on a trial-and-error basis.
— Mark @ Israel · Feb 3, 09:12 AM · #