State of the Union: Obama’s Semi-Offensive

A year of pointless brawling in Congress has certainly not helped Washington’s image, nor that of the legislative power, plagued by a 20 percent approval rating only 10 months away from an electoral deadline. This year, however, the worst handicap among all the blockages, emphasized by a ridiculous government shutdown, is none other than the president. Since 2012, he has been perceived as being paralyzed, powerless, and hopelessly bogged down by quibbles with the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. At least, the State of the Union finally allows him to announce a plan of action.

Obama had the honor of confirming the economic recovery, the decline of unemployment – at its lowest rate in five years – and a rise in real estate prices, which is a re-assuring indication in a country where 70 percent of families own their own homes. If the first paragraph, in the form of a national assessment, lifted the spirits of Americans, it took the power of optimism to calm Obama’s fellow citizens in the face of the future. He contradicted the fear that the country was in decline by recalling, for example, that the United States, and not China, is the principal recipient of global investment.

That is so. The principal news of the evening is summarized in the following. Obama, whom Democrats have reproached for having missed his “Rooseveltian moment” by naively counting on the inconceivable cooperation of Republicans, announced that he would not hesitate to resort to executive orders to bypass a block by Congress. A political earthquake? For lack of power to obtain an increase in the minimum wage by the House, a measure that would affect 17 million employees, Obama will declare a wage increase in companies under contract with the government. His great show of strength will better the fate of only a few hundred thousand. Similarly, his other measure to create a pension plan, like those of government employees, is not remarkably grand. At least, the president takes into consideration the growing theme of the Democratic counteroffensive before the elections next November: the struggle against income inequality that undermines American society.

Executive orders could restore Obama’s image among his Democratic voters, but it also risks being interpreted as a declaration of war in Republican opinion, hence the openly astonished and conciliatory, practically amicable, tone of the president in the course of his speech. Apart from the slightly ironic allusion to the 40 House votes against his health care plan and the less amenable portions, concerning the rise in profits and greater revenues in the face of the stagnating salaries of the middle class, Obama only briefly touched on subjects that really anger Congress, like immigration reform.

The rest was confined to commendable hopes of equal pay for women, the improvement of vocational training, reform of fiscal policies also in favor of the wealthy, preschool for all children, and the closure of Guantanamo, announced since 2008. Obama certainly aroused emotion and called for national unity by demanding a standing ovation for a soldier handicapped for life by a bomb in Afghanistan. However, his speech on the State of the Union foreshadowed a year of underlying conflicts and half measures, the only alternatives to the hostility of the Republican majority in search of re-election. As for the Democratic representatives, one hour after the presidential address, they made public their fears that the president’s “offensive” might alienate the voice of their centrist voters. Many of them even balked at the idea of being affiliated with Obama. We are far from the presidential dreams of 2008.