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Wednesday, January 25. 2012
The Ship of State
Tuesday was a quiet night after an equally quiet day. As workdays go, Tuesday was no different than any others. The news programs were talking about the performance of the candidates in Monday’s debate that took place in Tampa, Florida.
The two frontrunners, Newt Gingrich and Mit Romney, went after each other with a fury of a dogfight between a Dachshund and a Jack Russell. Newt had answers for most of Mit’s accusations and contempt for the ones he couldn’t answer.
The other two, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum, well who really cares about their debate performance anymore. They know the nomination isn’t theirs, although Santorum still harbors the fantasy that he could win the prize because he won the Iowa Caucuses.
His moment of regret came during the day on Tuesday when a birther-slash-Muslimer confronted him about why no one was trying to unseat President Obama, a man, this elderly woman claimed, was an avowed Muslim and not legally qualified to be president. He didn’t correct her. Santorum’s reason for not doing so: she was elderly and he wasn’t going to upset the old woman.That was the state of the race for the Republican nominee for President of the United States.
Right in the middle of the circus called the Republican Primaries, the president gave his State of the Union Address. He started with a hurrah to the troops, highlighting the fact that he had brought the troops home from Iraq, that troops were coming home from Afghanistan and that for the first time in two decades Usama bin Laden was no longer a threat to the United States.
Everyone in the chamber stood and cheered. How do you not cheer the troops?
It was perhaps President Obama’s best speech in his short three years in the Oval Office. It shouldn’t be a surprise though, because it was also his kick-off speech for his re-election campaign. Let’s be real. In stating for us his view of how the Ship of State is doing, he laid out challenges to his Republican opponents in Congress that they will have to respond to, by either keeping to their obstructionist path or by capitulating and agreeing to the president’s plans for the future. I’m betting it won’t be the latter.
Highlights of the speech, the highest of the night: Gabrielle Gifford’s entrance into the chamber for her last State of the Union Address. On Tuesday the Democratic Representative from Tucson, AZ announced she would be resigning her seat in the House of Representatives today. The official moment of Giffords’ resignation was an emotional moment as her friend, Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, read the letter of resignation to the assembled House, just after the body unanimously passed a bill she co-sponsored that made penalties for ultralight aircraft for smuggling drugs across the U.S.-Mexican border heavier.
As for the president’s speech: The recession has been stopped and a recovery started. Over three million jobs have been created in the past two years despite the Republican obstructionism. On top of that, American corporations have had some of the most successful years in history and to top it off, General Motors is once again the number one automaker in the world.
And despite that little fact, and that Chrysler is the fastest growing automaker in America, there are those — Mit Romney — who still insist we should have let America’s biggest private employers fail in 2009. Here’s the irony of Mit Romney’s animosity towards Detroit: not only his father was once the governor of Michigan, he was also CEO of General Motors.
Of course the president reminded everyone this economic crisis started during the Republicans’ watch. So he was going to stand firm against all attempts to return to the policies that set the recession in motion. President Obama made a big point of introducing Richard Cordray, the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, appointed during the recess because the Republicans in the Senate were not going to appoint someone to head an agency they are fiercely opposed to.
So now we have an agency that will oversee the money-lending business. Who would be against that? Oh yeah, the Republicans who think any regulation is too much regulation of the financial industry.
Now it’s no secret that in 2007 Mit Romney lobbied against any regulations of the financial industry, especially any that would raise the tax rate on capital gains from 15% to 30%. Congress, both houses and both major parties, tried to pass that legislation. But, as Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa stated in 2007, the financial industry had flooded the capitol with lobbyists to stop the regulations and his prediction of passage at the time: it was too risky for him to speculate.
In 2011, having learned their lesson from 2007 and having stated their number one priority was to make Barack Obama a one-term president, Congressional Republicans were firmly against any regulations of the financial industry. Including raising the taxes of those poor, put upon millionaires and billionaires. And of course Mit Romney was on the record, on tape no less, opposing raising his tax rate.Foreign policy was part of the speech, as it is every year. Tuesday’s State of the Union had a little more significance that anyone realized until hours after it was over. On his way to the dais, the president made a point of congratulating Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta for a job well done. That sent news hounds scurrying to find out what that was all about.
As you may recall, back in May 2011 the president was appearing at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. Unbeknownst to the rest of us, our military, spear-headed by Navy Seal Team Six, was in the process of disposing of Usama bin Laden. We didn’t know that until the following night when the president held a press conference to announce the news that bin Laden was buried at sea.
Tuesday, shortly before the president’s speech, a similar operation was taking place in Somalia. Navy Seals were rescuing two aid workers, one an American. We didn’t know that until the news broke several hours after the speech.
While Republicans are criticizing the president’s foreign policy, the president is getting things done the previous president was either unwilling or incapable of doing. And clearly, the current Secretary of State is more popular around the world and at home than her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice. In fact, Hillary Clinton is far more popular here in the United States than the president, who still has a pretty good favorability rating.
The official Republican response came from Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. We need only one word to describe his speech: grim. Nothing is going right in America, somehow all the president’s policies have failed, despite all the evidence to the contrary; Daniels, once thought of as one of the people who could beat the president in the 2012 general election, was basically making a campaign speech for the Republican nominee, whomever that might be. The way it stands at the moment, the 2012 presidential election is President Obama’s to lose and it doesn’t look too likely that will happen. But you never know. As good as the Republican primary race has been so far, now we’re hoping Newt Gingrich starts winning the delegates just to see if the Republicans have a brokered convention and choose someone other than anyone in the field at the moment.
Yes Mr. President, we are hopeful!
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