Yes We Can, Take Two

All those who think that Barack Obama will have some trouble getting re-elected in 2012 with a message of action, hope and change, like his message in 2008, must have eaten their words Tuesday night. In his State of the Union address, the very solemn annual speech about the union’s current state, Obama once again took up the 2008 slogan, promising this time an “America built to last,” and hammering the point: “We can do this. I know that we can, because we’ve done it before.” The president also laid out a long list of projects and reforms that he would still like to launch and that would absolutely require a second term; among them were: immigration reform (which he already put on the agenda in 2008, but which he didn’t have sufficient time or support to start), fiscal reform (to assure that millionaires pay at least a 30 percent income tax — which conveniently fell on the day that Mitt Romney revealed that he pays less than 15 percent on more than a $20 million salary) and aid to the refinancing of real estate credit or creation of a new department to fight against China’s poor business practices.

For the first time, Barack Obama also brandished — in a forceful fashion, at the very beginning and then again at the end of his speech — that which remains to this day the main “triumph” of his presidency: the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Until the present, Obama handled the triumph in a relatively modest way and didn’t talk about it much, but this will change gradually as the election draws nearer, a White House adviser told us last summer. The assassination of bin Laden is the only point that the Republicans cannot attack or contest.

Just as the old foxes of American politics (including Paul Begala and David Gergen) had guessed even before the State of the Union address was given, Barack Obama is trying to “reframe” the national debate on subjects that could be favorable for him. He only spoke a bit on Tuesday about employment and the national debt, in favor of emphasizing more the need for justice and equality, whether it be social or fiscal. If the central issue in November 2012 is the unemployment rate, Obama will have a hard time winning. If the main problem becomes inequality — the rich paying practically no taxes and the poor threatened with losing their “social protection safety net” — the battle will be much easier for the exiting American president. For this, the Occupy movement, which compares the richest 1 percent to the remaining 99 percent of the population, is what it has become about. Obama has taken up the correction of these numbers, comparing the 2 percent of the rich who benefit from fiscal breaks against the 98 percent of American families who earn less than $250,000 a year. To these 98 percent, he promises to not raise taxes. To illustrate the point, Warren Buffett’s secretary (whom we realized pays higher taxes than her billionaire boss, as the White House has been targeting him for the past few months) had been invited to attend the debate, in Michelle Obama’s lodgings. Let us say it: The number one problem is no longer unemployment or even jump-starting the economy, but rather the need for “fairness” in this country.