Great Ideas, Empty Promises

In an election year, the State of the Union speech is the most important of all speeches a president seeking a second term can give. He can set the tone, lay out the lines of attack and defense and present himself as a visionary. Barack Obama made full use of all this in his speech on Tuesday evening.

In it, Obama broke no new ground. He adopted the same tone used in his previous State of the Union speech and presented many of the same building blocks from his speech on education and the role of government that he gave in early December in Kansas.

On the most important point, how all his proposed new programs can be financed in light of the staggering budget deficit, he had nothing to offer save for the well-known – and very prudent – proposal to eliminate all the Bush-era tax cuts for America’s wealthiest people. It didn’t take very long before the first accusations of “populism” began appearing in the U.S. media.

No matter. Given a situation in which the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and an aggressive Senate minority are bent on rejecting even common-sense initiatives from the White House, Obama’s visions will remain ignored and nothing will be enacted in any case.

Philosophical differences are clear

Obama made it clear that in an election year, the battle for hearts and minds will be fought on concepts the tea party movement have put forth ever since his election in 2008: The government is always evil, people are responsible for their own welfare and their own destinies and if they fail – well, that’s just too bad. As an alternative to such a predatory policy, Obama offers a vision of a nation where government is an expression of society’s goal to provide at least minimal solidarity, care and equal opportunity.

That’s a campaign theme worthy of fighting for. And if Newt Gingrich is the Republican nominee, the philosophical differences will be more sharply defined than ever before, a clear choice between two different national directions. Even so, a reelected Obama may be unable to realize his vision in any case because the gridlock in Washington is structural and the nation will remain polarized.

That said, if Obama prevails in the polls because of his vision and enough Democrats are able to regain the congressional seats they lost in 2010, it may cause Republicans to rethink their positions and return to more responsible behavior.

If the United States wishes to regain its ability to reform, there’s no way around that. Otherwise, it will be an election of great ideas and empty promises. And that describes the current state of the American nation pretty well.