Obama Against Pessimism

The president dismantles Republican catastrophism about the future of the United States.

Barack Obama got it right on Tuesday, when he made his last State of the Union speech — the most solemn [speech] that the American president addresses to Congress every year — a reasoning in favor of hope and facing the future with no fear.

The insistent alarming message to which the electorate is being submitted by the eccentric Republican leadership — especially pre-presidential candidate Donald Trump — faced a relevant contestation from a president who, although politically diminished in his last year in office, demonstrated his public speaking skills again at the Capitol.

Before representatives and senators together in this joint session, Obama rejected the catastrophic vision. His appeal to the need for injecting civility in public speech fully hits the target of a disease — political populism — that to varying degrees contaminates North American and European policy. It is a perfectly applicable message to both sides of the Atlantic.

New situations also create new challenges and problems that create anxiety and concern in society, but the solutions are not reached through demagogic answers, breaking the rules, or making democracies renounce the principles on which they are based. A profound and prolonged economic crisis — whose fragile recovery has not reached all levels of society — the threat of jihadi terrorism, or the challenge of the massive migration flows are not insurmountable obstacles capable of justifying the rupture with the values that guaranteed freedom. And the apocalyptic rhetoric is certainly not the best attitude for facing this reality.

This is what Obama reminded the North Americans — he only has a few more months in the White House and therefore deserves the credibility of someone who does not need to please any voters.