If you hadn’t already dismissed the State of the Union address as a kind of political Oscars—a room full of rich folk clapping at announcements they already knew were coming—then the lead-up to this year’s address would surely have you convinced. Perhaps no coincidence that the Oscar noms came on the same day.
Firstly, we already know much of the content of the king’s speech to come. The White House has been shrewdly leaking all week, first with a preview video from the president, and then in several anonymous tips Tuesday discussing the policy content. Those are: a ban on earmarks and a freeze on non-defense discretionary spending among others. For narrative note, read: shift to the middle.
Secondly, pre-discussion of the speech fixated, as to be expected, on how that content will play to the Beltway political academy. To stretch a metaphor, it focused on what the speech will mean for Obama’s box office. Politico was up Monday night—twenty-four hours before the speech itself—with a “how the left was lost” piece on liberal reactions to the president’s speech to come. Okay, potential reactions mixed with some warnings: “Marginalizing the left didn’t work in 2010,” Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas told Politico. “If Democrats decide to double down on that strategy, they better pray for a Sarah Palin nomination.”
Elsewhere, Gallup helped the pundit predictions by releasing a poll showing few presidents have seen a rise in their approval rating following a SOTU. At the Post, Ezra Klein declared Tuesday morning that the “speech has already worked.” And Mark Halperin predicted Avatar-like returns. “The combination of his momentum, bipartisan seating arrangements and the emotion in the hall sure to be generated by guests from Arizona means the president is almost certainly going to have a boffo evening that plays to his political strong suits,” he writes, then adds, “Now he just has to deliver.”
Thirdly, about those seating arrangements—the theater, and pre-theater, focused as much on the audience as the stage. In the wake of Arizona and pressed under a new cry for “civility,” much of the pre-speech press was devoted to who’ll sit where. Not just where Tucson hero Daniel Hernandez would sit, but where each pol would plonk themselves down. Rather than sitting either side of the ideological divide that splits the House chamber at an angle determined by the most recent election, this year, a number of Congresspeople will cross the aisle to sit with their political adversaries.
The point? To avoid that ugly and divisive human two-column graph that seems to play out on TV whenever the president makes an ideologically un-neutral point. So we got reports that Democrat Chuck Schumer would sit with Republican Tom Coburn for example. And that Nancy Pelosi declined an invite to sit next to Eric Cantor—this isn’t a Jennifer-can’t-sit-near-Ange thing, she already promised to go with Republican Roscoe Bartlett. And then there are those testy Supreme Court Justices.
For the rest of the week we will be mired in SOTU overkill. We will be asked to reflect on just how well the president did—compared to his speech in Tucson. On whether Paul Ryan or Michele Bachmann was the more worthy Republican responder. On just how far right the president has moved. On how politically tenable the president’s proposals are for is core. On who cheered and why. On who grimaced and how. And, of course, on just what all of this means for 2012.
But amid the frenzy, a small request and a brief reminder. A lot of the boring stuff in the speech—the stuff perhaps not couched in rich Obaman flourishes—will be the litany of policies that make up the bulk of any State of the Union address. And policies, if debated and ultimately enacted, have a tentacular way of reaching outside the Beltway and into the lives of real people across the country. Budget cuts will do more than enrage the left: they will cost jobs and services. As would an end to earmarks and any raft of fiscally disciplined moves the president intends to announce.
"Budget cuts will do more than enrage the left: they will cost jobs and services."
Federal budget cuts may cost jobs in the coercive, non-productive (govt, public) sphere, but there will not be a net loss in services: it's not as though public service (sic) nets real productivity, wealth, efficiency, or innovation. Moreover, the less taxpayer money being wasted by the federal govt, the more money available, supposedly, for efficient investing in the voluntary, productive (private) sphere, where real prosperity is fostered through actual productivity, saving, investment, mutual exchange, and so on. That is, unless the money is spent by state govts; in which case, the results should be only slightly better than the results of federal spending.
"As would an end to earmarks ..."
Ending earmarks does nothing to reduce spending: it merely and unconstitutionally lets the Executive, and not the Congress, decide how to spend the already-allocated funds.
And that being the case, "the left" (sic: authoritarians, imperialists, Hamiltonians, et al.) should be quite pleased. Traditional liberals, on the other hand, should be enraged.
#1 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Tue 25 Jan 2011 at 11:48 PM
Theater, I don't mind. Kabuki theater, that gets a little wearing. Do British writers, often greatly admired by Anglophile-American journalists, make this big a deal about the Queen's annual 'speech from the throne'?
#2 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Wed 26 Jan 2011 at 12:42 PM
I sense that Congress across the board got hit by innumerable emails and phone calls etc to be more civil in all their actions so we got it more like an avalanche than daily doses--the latter would have been ignored. Also, too many of our citizens prefer to read or listen to "the fluff" you mention than about the protests in Tunisia, Egypt, the bombings in Iraq and Moscow and the "new country" called Somaliland, the new Parliament that Karzai finally allowed to sit--as if he had much choice!!
Most of the above I did find in the NYTimes but not today--last week, weekend or BBC. Good old BBC!! Where would I be without it!!??!! But then how many of our 310 million civilians know there is a Somaliland or where it might be?? or how many care if Egyptian or Tunisian citizens yell at each other or get burned by their governments?? Not very many I'm afraid. Few could tell you where much of any of them are or who gathered to discuss what the governments are planning to do with their respective budgets at home and worldwide. It isn't a pocketbook issue to most, so most don't care--and too many journalists know that. But that is a passion of mine so I subscribe to magazines in paper and online to find out more than just a few headlines. NYT will give me a few here and there but not after they had to stay up late listening to the President. For me it was only dinner time--6pm PST. Hopefully NYTimes and others will catchup with the world come tomorrow or next week. Do you think so??!! I won't hold my breath!!
#3 Posted by Patricia Wilson, CJR on Wed 26 Jan 2011 at 11:17 PM