Snakes of the Union

by Jim Washburn

The poor Republicans. Whatever else one might say about the ritual of the State of the Union address, it’s at least an opportunity for the old white men of Congress to get their annual calisthenics in. While their Democratic cohorts were leaping to their feet every time Obama stopped to breathe, on the other side of the aisle just about nothing short of Terri Schiavo returning from heaven with Ronald Reagan carrying golden tablets in his arms (Make gold part of your investment portfolio!) would have moved the Republicans’ flinty asses from their seats.

They’re riding high again, of course, since the residents of Massachusetts recently couldn’t think of any better way to honor Ted Kennedy’s memory then to send a guy to Congress who’ll crush Ted’s lifelong dream of healthcare reform. Senator Beefcake gives the Republicans just enough votes to prevail—not enough to be a majority, of course, but enough to mount a filibuster. And, as they’ve shown, they’ve become such knee-jerk obstructionists that they probably couldn’t take a vote on pizza toppings without filibustering. Is it funny that no one in the national press seems to be remarking that the reason for the Republicans’ recent jubilation is they can now use the arcane, not-in-the-Constitution filibuster to block the will of the majority of their constituents? Happy days are here again!

I think Obama did a remarkable job in his speech. It was gracious, self-effacing, forgiving, welcoming, hopeful, and pragmatic in facing the future, and with just enough of an occasional razz at Congress or the Supreme Court to let them know that he is not incognizant of their efforts to strip mine our democracy.

I have friends who are still throwing up over Obama’s embrace of nuclear power, “clean coal,” and offshore drilling, while I would prefer that he cut our military budget at least by half instead of exempting it from his proposed spending freeze. But we don’t function in the world Obama has to.

The lefties I know who distrust Obama the most tend to live in San Francisco or Seattle, where there is a supermajority of intelligent, green, fellow lefties, so they don’t often have to directly confront the fact that we live in a nation of idiots. I don’t mean to say that anyone who disagrees with me is an idiot, just that it helps. Because, otherwise, they might be obliged to look at facts and then wouldn’t be thinking Obama’s got medical death panels on call or that the world’s top climate scientists are just jerking us around for laughs. We are a deeply under-informed nation, and our political discourse is generally framed by whoever’s yelling the loudest.

Obama doesn’t have the luxury of hanging out at the Vegan Tofu Palace with your friends. He’s tasked with representing all of us, and that includes the mouth-breathing ruminants among us. If he wants to lead the nation somewhere, he has to bring them along, too, and they don’t move so fast.

So what I heard in Obama’s speech was him creating a vision of a more equitable, progressive, and greener America, but he was depicting that vision with a diorama made of meat, so the folks would get it. So when he was talking about creating an infrastructure we can build a future on and about creating green technologies, for example, he laid out the common sense reasons why they were in our best interests, but also raised the specter of Europe, China or India beating us to it, declaring, “Well, I do not accept second-place for the United States of America!”

Clever, that was, young Skywalker: It pretty much forced the Republicans to stand, because sitting looked too much like they were in favor of us becoming a second-rate nation, and it stood a better chance of resonating in the hinterlands because it’s a sad fact of human nature that we very often don’t see the value in something unless we’re afraid someone else is trying to take it away from us.

I watched the speech with a notepad in hand, writing out his choicer comments, which I’m now typing into my computer. So tell me if this feels more handmade than text that’s merely cut and pasted from the New York Times:

Obama defended the swift, expensive, imperfect actions his administration had taken to shore up Wall Street, noting truthfully that much of it had started under Bush, and how it was that or face a second Depression. He also stated the fact that, despite the stock markets’ aerial stunts, for years now most Americans have been “working harder and longer for less.” That is a cold, hard truth about America, and it certainly never issued from George Bush’s lips.

He effectively stole some ground from the Republicans, who have a long history of paying lip service to small businesses while promoting programs written by big business to help big business. Obama, instead, is promoting programs to free up $30 billion in loans to small businesses; to issue tax credits to employers who take on new employees or raise wages; and to eliminate the capital gains tax for them.

He asserted it’s time to “finally slash the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas”; the we need a jobs bill because “we can’t afford another economic expansion like the last decade’s, where jobs grew more slowly than in any prior expansion,” where real income declined and only speculators grew fat. He called for financial reform “to guard against the same recklessness that nearly brought down our entire economy.”

He didn’t back off on healthcare, restated the plight of citizens left to the tender mercies of the insurance companies and issued the challenge, “I will not walk away from these Americans and neither should the people in this chamber.”

He’s the first President I’ve heard in decades refer to a “credibility gap” in decrying the political polarization in a Washington where, instead of attending to the people’s business, “every day is election day,” producing “a deficit of trust, of deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works.”

Some have said Obama contributed to that climate by commenting in his speech on the Supreme Court’s recent decision granting corporations the free speech rights of individuals: “With all due deference to the separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law, that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.”

How rude! How dare he chastise their invited guests so, just because the court’s smug majority had sided once again with money and power, by making a decision so broad in scope and so dismissive of a century of settled U.S. law that it revealed Justices Roberts and Alito to have perjured themselves when they told Congress under oath that this was just the type of decision they wouldn’t make?

I think Obama was right to give them a little public grief, but I also think he blew an opportunity. It would have been a grand time to lead his party in refusing to accept corporate donations. If the corrupting power of corporate money is so great, they should have no part of it, and leave the American public with the stark choice between heeding the small voice of truth or the bellow of wall-to-wall advertising. Wouldn’t it be lovely to see the “people’s party” act like it for a change?

Obama did offer some words of admonishment to both parties in Congress, first addressing his fellow Democrats:

“I would remind you that we sill have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve problems, not run for the hills.... And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town—a supermajority—then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it is not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions.”

All in all, a measured, gentle reminder of what it’s supposed to be about. And he served up more of it two days later when he strode solo into the lions’ den of a Republican representatives’ retreat and took on all comers. I’d recommend watching it in its entirety. It may be unprecedented in American politics, and is the bold opposite of Bush, who only appeared before friendly audiences with pre-screened questions.

 Was it appreciated? Nope. You’d think Republicans would be the least bit contrite, given the calamitous financial meltdown that occurred on their watch; not to mention the worst terrorist attack on American soil; or their shameful response to Katrina; or their policies propelling America from a huge surplus to its most monstrous debt; or about their lying us into a needless war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives; or eight years of environmental obstruction; or the gutting of the middle class and the gap between rich and poor growing ever faster—all but a few of their fine accomplishments.

Yes, a normal man might be humbled by such a record, and perhaps be willing to give the man the nation chose to right those wrongs a chance. But not these guys, not a chance.

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