Obama's Economic Speech: Morality Instead of Concept

Obama’s speech was one thing above all: boring. The American president must be careful that he doesn’t make himself a caricature of himself.

Barack Obama is dreaming — his American dream. He wants to go down as a successful president of the country. And he has said it himself: His days in the White House are numbered. They were just 1,276 on Wednesday.

So Obama has to deliver now. He needs to stimulate the economy. According to the prognoses, it will only recover sluggishly in the first year of his second term in office with growth of 1.7 percent. To be sure, the number of unemployed is moderately decreasing. But the jobs created are bringing those re-entering the job market only half or less of their former salary.

The ever-growing gap between poor and rich massively erodes the idea of American equal opportunity. It is not enough to again and again preach social justice. Obama knows: He must get his political opponents on board to get to the goal. The same opponents who, before Obama’s first term, made it their goal to bring about of the fall of the Democrats no matter what the cost to the American people continue to do so.

And the conservatives have already made their next trick known: They want to let him fail even more bitterly in the upcoming budget negotiations than in the previous years. Obama also knows: If the Republicans do not want to spoil everything in the midterm elections, they cannot afford to reduce themselves to the role of spoilsports. The Senate has realized that. With Republican votes, the Democrats got some bills through in the past few weeks — from immigration reform to student loans.

Obama now wants to use this momentum to take back the reins in economic policy. But to be honest: The White House has been pitching a series of moral sermons as if it were a matter of the new Superman film.

The rhetoric is, as usual, brilliant. But the plot is insufficient, and the monologue is an old one; it is only getting longer and longer. Obama must be careful that he doesn’t make himself into a caricature of himself.

Otherwise the speech bubble will burst like his American dream.