Bright Colors in the Gray

It has always been intriguing for me to watch American senators, congressmen and congresswomen gather in January for the president’s address to the nation. Many of the ladies — but not only the ladies — are dressed in colors much brighter than usual. Colorful patches here and there break the usual uniformity of the legislators’ crowd, most likely in an attempt to attract the attention of the cameras.

An audience of more than 40 million voters watched the Union address this year. The president had not delivered any speeches since October. Not to spend too much time in front of the cameras is part of his presidential campaign strategy. The viewers, who are growing tired with the weekly debates of the Republican candidates and their bloody fight for Obama’s seat in the White House, are not in the habit of seeing the president often.

Obama launched a critical phase of his election campaign at the Union address stage with a powerful strike against his Republican opponents, many of whom were present in the room. Talking about the current state of the country, Obama delivered one of the most aggressive speeches I’ve ever heard. The president simply announced to the voters that he will act in accordance with what he believes is in the best interest of the nation, with or without them. This warning, repeated several times, is meant to persuade the electorate that he is an active, determined leader, while the Senate Republican majority has one single task — to block his ventures.

The president shaped his vision for the country in the next couple of years and pointed out a couple of times, in the beginning and toward the end of his speech, the victories of his foreign policy: the military action against Osama bin Laden, the end of the war in Iraq and Gadhafi’s regime, and the role of America in the “Arab Spring.”

The White House presidential strategy is not difficult to grasp. He needs to stand against the Republicans, who are understandably willing to keep the debate focused on only the last 3 years. The re-election of an American president logically turns into a platform where his way of leading the country is discussed. His opponents happily embrace the political benefits of the economic crisis and the omnipresent insecurity hogging Americans and the whole world.

On the other side, while promising to do everything in his power to improve the situation of the middle class, the president actually uses the most classic weapons known to populism. He offered a mixture of standard Keynesian measures (meaning funding public projects), educational programs, the expected taxation changes that will finally even out the tax rates paid by millionaires and their personal assistants, retribution on the financial speculators that brought the 2008 crisis and many other ideas that the masses would gladly consume. Most of these popular ideas, though, cannot be put into practice without the cooperation of Congress, which at this point looks completely impossible. Additionally, the president promised to encourage businesses that hire at home instead of outsourcing abroad.

Although I can’t help being a little bit sarcastic when talking about the president’s promises, I actually like Obama. He looks a lot more tuned to reality than his Republican opponents. All they do is repeat old maxims such as, “if it is good for General Motors, it is good for the United States.” Obama also claims to believe in this principle, especially when it comes to reinstating the United States as the world’s leading producer of goods. Unlike the Republicans, though, he dares to acknowledge and underline the fact that irresponsible financial scams orchestrated by big corporations in the last decade have deeply hurt millions and millions of Americans.

That’s why when Obama points at social justice as a higher value, he strikes a chord with the predominant mood of the American people. Not one of the Republican candidates, worried about being hurt by a lack of capitalist zeal, dares to go in this direction.

The campaign rhetoric is often similar to the bright colors worn by the vain legislators — when the cameras are gone, it will all go back to gray, mundane routine.