Posted on 01/25/2010 2:17:39 PM PST by presidio9
There is a State of the Union speech Barack Obama should give Wednesday night, needs to give and won't. There is a speech he should write and deliver without input from all those geniuses around him who didn't see Scott Brown's pickup truck coming until it ran them all over.
That speech would begin this way:
"There are people who say I was a far better candidate than I am a President, and you know what? So far, they're right about that. It is why I pledge to you tonight to become something more than the President of words.
"The theme of my campaign was 'Change We Can Believe In.' So far, I can see why even those who voted for me now wonder if that was one more empty slogan. But my hope, from this day forward, is to give our country change it can actually SEE. If I can't, I realize I'm on my way to being just one more American out of work."
Obama is better than he has shown, better than the vituperative coverage he gets from the right. Better than this Republican jihad against him, on health care and everything else. Better than a failed opposition party whose only plan is for this President to fail.
Still: In one year, Obama has allowed his enemies to turn "populist" into the new code word of American life, a heroic way to simply describe people who desperately wanted him out of office before he even TOOK office, who believe the only two people he could have beaten are the two he did: John McCain and Sarah Palin, captain of the right-wing pep squad.
The leaders of the "populist" movement? They are the ones who snarl into microphones, with laughable self-importance and an even more laughable moral certainty, vowing to take back America one state at a time. From whom? Americans? Wow. These guys should be going cave to cave in Afghanistan.
Obama needs to talk about that, too, in his State of the Union. Just not in the way other Presidents have:
"This isn't Civil War America, despite what you constantly hear. This isn't 'my' America against 'their' America. It is 'our' America. This isn't the 1860s, or even the America of the mid-1960s, the violent America we had between when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and the same thing happened to his brother Robert, and to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Just because we disagree doesn't mean you are a better American than I am. Or that my way is better than yours.
"Fifteen months ago, I thought that my election might bring the country together. Now we seem farther apart than ever. And I haven't done nearly enough to prevent that from happening. I said I would end 'petty grievances' and have. Because now the grievances are nastier and uglier than ever."
Obama should say that the face of his party is not Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi. Then he should go on to say:
"Job reform should have been the first priority of this administration, not health care reform. I have spent far too much time obsessing about a bill that I haven't read and no one else has, either. But more than that, I have allowed myself to be labeled and even stereotyped by opponents who sound a thousand times angrier than the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. These are people who have deluded themselves that the only way for the country to succeed is for me to fail."
The President should talk Wednesday night about the mistake he made hiring the likes of Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers - Reid and Pelosi for the economy! - to fix this mess when they come out of the culture that created it in the first place. It would be like putting Mark McGwire in charge of steroid reform in baseball.
More from the speech he ought to give:
"I stopped listening to one set of economic advisers the minute I became President, listened instead to insiders who helped turn this into a debtor nation, on just about all fronts. I'm no economist, but I am smart enough to know that if our current government were an American family, the banks I've propped up would be about to foreclose on the White House."
Obama is the one who needs to be a populist Wednesday night. A real one. There is a reason why people believed in him enough to elect him. He needs to remember how, and why, before it's too late. He starts Wednesday night by reminding the American people, in plain language, that it took the guy before him eight years to get us into this kind of mess. This President gets more than one year to get us out of it.
His America is NOT my America. I do not think they will be reconciled.
Once again the MSM thinks 0bamas agenda is liberalism rather than socialism. He is on track to implement a socialist agenda and to destroy the US economy.
What is required is a comprehensive plan that creates a stable future for the economy, the markets and consumers.
Piecemeal solutions like cash for clunkers, real estate purchases credits and middle income incentives don't accomplish anything (but run up the deficit).
Obama is stuck on STOOOPID!!!
No speech necessary. It's just wasted airtime. The network would be much better served playing a classic 3 Stooges marathon for an hour. Seriously. We all need a good laugh instead of O-teleprompter.
The govenment cannot “Make” jobs, what it can do
is get OUT OF THE WAY of business
which is the source of jobs.
I most certainly DO want this president’s POLICIES
to FAIL, they are anti every thing
that has made this nation great.
Obama= Epic FAIL.
I absolutely do not expect him to make any kind of
conciliatory speech, it’s not in him. I expect him
to harden his line hoping to boost his leftist base
and create more class warfare.
o-bow-man is a bought and paid for slave and will do and say whatever his slave owners tell him.
Just so he makes no mistakes he will read it word for word from his electronic master.
Why is it that sports writers (or theater critics, like Frank Rich) are presumed to have anything more important to tell us than gas pumpers or go-go dancers?
He's not even a good sportswriter. He's a whiney girl.
You only missed the new party line: Republicans don’t have any ideas, so they spend all of their time attacking Obama’s wonderful plans. Obama is too busy dealing with George Bush’s problems to deal with his attackers. Plus, he’s too much of a gentleman to respond. The voters are either too lazy or too stupid to break things down for themselves. That’s how we got where we are today. Plus George Steinbrenner was a fat obnoxious idiot who never did a single thing right until he got alzheimers, the people who buy expensive seats at Yankee Stadium are worse than Hitler, and some female athlete is at least as culturally important as Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, and Muhammad Ali. (Note: Be sure to exclude Anna Kournikova from this example).
The blue-collar union liberals who hang on Lupica’s every word would be suprised to know that he is a life-long Red Sox fan who grew up in New Hampshire.
Obama is better than he has shown,NO HE IS NOT
better than the vituperative coverage he gets from the right. NO HE IS NOT
Obama is what he is, a no talent, lack of leadership, political hack.
Obama is better than he has shown,NO HE IS NOT
better than the vituperative coverage he gets from the right. NO HE IS NOT
Obama is what he is, a no talent, lack of leadership, political hack.
Mike, consider this, and as you consider it, it probably ought to give you pause: I’d really like the president to give that speech, too. I want him to say at every opportunity how the dysfunctionality we’re seeing from him, his executive branch, and his majority-party colleagues in Congress is all the right wing’s fault. I really do.
I haven’t read Lupica in 15 years or more. He was lame then and from your post, he sounds every bit as lame today.
obama's war on seniors See the links in post 43-46 and on the last page.
Woof, woof, let granny eat dog food...spoof on 'let them eat cake'.
Expanding support for families balancing work with caring for elderly relatives with a $102.5 million Caregiver Initiative adding $52.5 million in funding to Department of Health and Human Services caregiver support programs that provide temporary respite care, counseling, training, and referrals to critical services. The administration says the extra funding will allow nearly 200,000 additional caregivers to be served and 3 million more hours of respite care to be provided. It also adds $50 million to programs that provide transportation help, adult day care, and in-home services, such as aides to help seniors bathe and cook, help which eases the burden for family members and helps seniors stay in their homes.
What exactly IS "coverage from the right?" FOX News? A few weelies? A handful of papers? Obama's message isn't strong enough to overcome that with the help of 5 TV stations and hundreds of newspapers? Is it possible that his problem lies somewhere else?
Great one!
I like this part, the only fact in the whole diatribe:
“I said I would end ‘petty grievances’ and have. Because now the grievances are nastier and uglier than ever.”
This is the calm before the storm.
Which geniuses would those be?
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