The State of the Union

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8LqG_Ld0Dw

Rob and I watched President Obama’s State of the Union address tonight. I found it fascinating that the president of a party that was so defeated during the midterm elections sounded feisty, optimistic, and definitive about what he hopes to accomplish during his last two years in office. It also seemed to me that he was wrong about how the US is beating back ISIS or ISIL, whatever acronym you want to give this sadistic terrorist group. That said, I feel that Obama has been and is a visionary president. Here’s why:

Ten million people who didn’t have health insurance now do because of the Affordable Care Act. I still think Obama didn’t set the bar high enough initially; it should have been Medicare for all. But ObamaCare beats what we had before.

Since the financial meltdown during Bush’s final months in office, the economy has rebounded with more than eleven million private sector jobs.

What Obama called middle class economics is a slap in the face of the Republican economic plan of trickle down economics, which Naomi Klein discusses so brilliantly in her book The Shock Doctrine.

The whole trickle down idea is that by giving tax breaks to the uber wealthy, the upper one percent, the people at the bottom benefit. The biggest problem I have with this theory, just from a human point of view, is that it smacks of elitism. And the reality is that the uber wealthy tend to hang on to their money and it never reaches the rest of us.

I liked Obama’s plan for taxing corporations at a higher rate and giving middle class families tax breaks for child care; making junior college free; and ushering in other benefits for the middle class, which has been shrinking at an alarming rate since the meltdown in 2008. Without a middle class, any economy becomes a kind of feudal system, the very rich at the top, the rest of us at the bottom.

I actually thought much of his speech was brilliant, particularly the parts that weren’t in the prepared speech. After talking about what has been accomplished economically under his administration, he flashed one of those wry Obama smiles and said, “This is good news, people.” When he talked about his agenda in terms of his not having to run again, there was sporadic applause from the Republican side. He quickly added something to the effect that he didn’t have to campaign again because he’d won the last two presidential elections. Ha-ha.

I liked that he talked about how he outlawed torture, had cut the population of Gitmo in half during his administration, and that he hoped to close the prison before he left office. I was disappointed that he didn’t call for an indictment of Bush, Cheney and company for war crimes. I mean, c’mon, the Repubs impeached Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Why can’t the Dems indict for war crime and torture?

I still feel that Obama has been and is a visionary president who has faced an intractable congress of idiots who are greedy, self-serving, and can’t get their act together as a party to define what, if anything , they stand for. Case in point: the Republicans didn’t have just one rebuttal to the state of the union; they had FIVE. The official choice, Joanie Ernst, a Republican from Iowa, had only one thing in her favor – she’s female. She wasn’t a water gulper like Marco Rubio (the last Repub to offer a rebuttal)   but was something worse, the kind of woman I hope I never meet on my way to toss feed to the chickens out back.

I will never understand how any woman, any minority, any person of color, any immigrant, can support any Republican. They hate you. They say they don’t, they say they are Hispanic friendly, but want to deport all the dreamers. They say they love women, but want to own your bodies and dictate what you can and can’t do with your bodies. They say they are friendly to the gay and lesbian community, but at every opportunity they block your ability to marry the person you love.

Obama’s legacy is a done deal as the first Afro-American president. But as the saying goes, the devil is in the details. And despite his missteps in the beginning, his belief that the Republicans would be willing to work with him (ha), that he didn’t set some bars high enough, that he is dead wrong on the whole surveillance thing with the NSA and Snowden, my sense is that he, like Martin Luther King, like JFK, had a vision. And he has tried to live true to that vision. That’s no small thing.

In 2008, Rob, Megan, and I waited hours to hear him and Joe Biden speak in Fort Lauderdale. After eight years of Bush, we were riveted. I am still riveted. Obama is a powerful orator, and despite the fact that he won two terms as president, he’s an outlier because he’s also a visionary. He sees what we could become as a nation, a people. But he’s hampered. Maybe he was shown the MacGruder film of the JFK assassination when he took office; maybe all new presidents are shown that clip to keep them in line. Who knows?

So, to you Republican majority in Congress, let’s toss down the gauntlet and see what you can get done in the next two years. Frankly, I’m not holding my breath, not when you guys have FIVE rebuttals to the state of the union. What’s that say about the fractures within your own party?

Well, nothing good.

Onward, Obama. Follow your vision. Pave the way for an Elizabeth Warren presidency in 2016. And become an ex-prez with clout, a voice.