Splashes from Beyond the Ocean: A True Quarter

The State of the Union address is not, strictly speaking, required of the president, according to the U.S. Constitution. The paramount law of the country literally states that the head of the country must give the Congress information on how things are going “from time to time.” Some of the White House occupants read this as a totally informal duty. For example, the revered-by-everyone-nowadays Thomas Jefferson (president no. 3) sent the senators and the congressmen handwritten notes full of smudges and strike-throughs.

Around the beginning of the 20th century, this informality gave way to the pompous “programmed” speeches delivered every year toward the end of January. They are now an essential part of the presidential institution’s ceremonialism in the U.S. On Tuesday Barack Obama successfully followed this theatrical-political tradition, which gives the national leader the opportunity to lay out his thoughts live on prime time TV.

I like Obama (although many Americans do not agree with me). I think he is an excellent orator and (still) a decent president. He is certainly a great improvement over the careless George W. Bush. His speech was smooth and well thought out, especially the first part. Exceptionally refined words selected by the talented speechwriter, Jon Favreau: America needs to find the strength to unite in spite of the political animosities; it is important now to place an emphasis on education and stimulate the nation’s creative power, so that the high unemployment rates can be overcome and the superfluous expenses cut down.

We’ll reform the state bureaucracy; we’ll stimulate the businesses; we’ll develop an alternative source of energy (nuclear reactions being considered such an alternative source now); and a lot of similar promises. The president even mentioned the social network Facebook as one of the accomplishments of the American genius.

The effect of the address was definitely uplifting, but also evanescent — unless you are just uncritically fond of beautiful speeches. It is clear that Obama wants to play in the middle of the political court.

Following the catastrophic loss of the Democrats at the November elections, their ambitions to initiate grand changes in the way American society functions gave way to a series of exhausting battles for situational advantage between them and the Republicans. The crossing into the centrist camp is a classic presidential maneuver when things are not going well in the middle of the first term. In this way the White House staff starts preparing the ground for the reelection of the leader. Thus, Bill Clinton underwent successful reorientation in 1995. Bush, Jr., succeeded in pushing his entering the moderate camp back to 2006, using the excuse that he was a wartime president for a long time before that.

As a result, it is no surprise that Obama’s State of the Union address left me under the impression that the president was opening his 2012 reelection campaign. After I had heard all the promises it contained, I decided to believe only a quarter of them. I’ll explain why now. The website http://politifact.com, which won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Journalism in 2009, offers enlightening analyses of different political statements from the past few years, assessing them in terms of their truthfulness.

The comparison between the current president’s pre-election promises and what he has done so far is particularly interesting. Out of the 500 promises given by Obama in 2008, 134 have been actualized, 38 have been conspicuously broken, and 41 have been partially kept by means of compromises; as to the rest, it’s either too early to tell, or they have been blocked in some phase of their development. Consequently, it seems that for two years, the executive branch of government has accomplished about a quarter of what was promised before the elections. I don’t have the exact data to confirm this, but I suppose the previous occupants of the White House have kept their promises in more or less the same proportion.

Half-jokingly, half-seriously, the conclusion implied is that the typical person running for president in the most copied democracy in the world is bluffing 75 percent of the time when he is saying something before his election. That wouldn’t be such a problem if only we knew exactly which quarter of all the promises given by the future national leader would turn into actions. Unfortunately, no constitution clears that up.