So it was State of the Union time of year again this week. Luckily that means that the news stories and blog topics have changed from weeks of examining the successes and failures of Obama's first year in office, to the successes and failures he will have in his second. It was good speech, it was not a great speech but it defiantly wasn't terrible. With Obama's fantastic orating skills the expectation was there for something historic. With the recent election failures and the collapse of his flagship Health-care bill there was a need for something historic. But from what I saw that did not occur.
Before the speech many were talking about how this was the time when Obama had to come out fighting. He still had the majority in both the Senate and Congress so why should he back down from his agenda. To a certain degree he didn’t and stood firm on his opinions and positions but I don’t feel he did enough. A NY Times article compared Obama's SOTU and Clinton's 1996 SOTU and how they took different directions. Both were facing problems of skepticism about their agenda and would use the SOTU to change that. The Times believes that whilst Clinton moved to the center ground, Obama stuck to his guns and continued to stay to the left. I don’t agree with this.
Though Obama did stick with many of his policies and did fight for his positions he gave away too much. No Democratic President as intelligent and environmentally aware as Obama should be telling the world that:
... to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development.
In this situation, and in other similar ones, Obama seems to be pandering to the Republicans. That just doesn't make sense considering the Democrats position. Though I enjoyed the speech and I think Obama did well I was left with some burning questions. Some of which I think Obama was actually asking his audience.
Why should a Democratic President who has the majority in both houses have to give away anything? Why do Democrats fail to unite even on key issues that they agree need to be changed (i.e. health-care)? Why don't the Democrats push the Republicans into actually filibustering instead feeling from just the threat of one?