Tonight at 9pm President Obama will give his first State of the Union address where I imagine he'll both look back at what has happened in the past year, as well as where we are heading in the years to come. I'll be listening on NPR for the first part since I'll be driving home from Raleigh to Chapel Hill at 9 (I checked with the WUNC Interim Program Director and they will be broadcasting it). Since many local elections are the country will be affected the general mood towards Democrats, and President Obama is the captain of that ship, I think it is a good time to look at what he has accomplished, and what he still needs to do.
President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, he signed a bill to expand veteran benefits, he signed kids tobacco legislation, he signed a land protection act, & SCHIP, gave the Cairo speech to the Muslim world & has represented our country abroad (Europe seems to be pretty fond of him for the most part), he oversees an EPA that has shown it is willing to get tough on environmental issues via regulation if the congress won’t via legislation, he gave a widely watched education speech, he's advocated for science in our schools, & is for stem cell research, he's appointed a supreme court justice, he's ended torture, respects the Geneva Convention, and has plans to close Gitmo (albeit behind schedule after responding to facts on the ground), he's going to have us out or Iraq next year and starting to pulling out of Afghanistan (the one that actually attacked us) at the same time.
And since he gets a hard time on gay rights (& deservedly so) , here is a section on what he has done so far. On the gay rights from he has signed legislation such as the hate crimes bill, and ryan white care act, he has lifted the travel/immigration ban based on HIV status earlier this month, he has expanded federal benefits to gay spouses which is the largest employer in the US & in some sense sets the tone for many other employers, he's invited gay couples to public white house family holiday events (& to the State of the Union, the guest list even mentions a gay couple adopting), he's appointed openly gay officials as well as gay ambassadors. He's called for the end of Don't Ask Don't Tell on the campaign trail, again after taking office during the National Equality March weekend, and said (although he should certainly say it louder & more often) he would sign legislation relating to repealing DADT, the repealing of the Defense of Marriage Act, & enacting the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.
And then of course there is all the day to day of meetings & running the country. All of this without mentioning any health care reform efforts or economic recovery efforts which are the areas that have seen the most work. And it wasn’t just keeping Wall Street from collapsing, but cash for clunkers which had an economic and environmental aspect to it, and first time home buyer subsidies, and so on. Combine that with recent efforts to get money back from the banks, and recent efforts to fight corporate rule, & the SCOTUS decision (see
http://www.youtube.com/... ) and I think he has had a busy first year.
As far as the speech goes I expect we will see a lot of discussion of job creation, and deficit cutting. I've heard he may even say he now has many military leaders behind the DADT repeal idea... although that remains to be seen.
What do you expect to see, and what do you hope to see?