While watching the State of the Union address, I couldn’t help being slightly cynical about everything Obama was proposing and hoping our country could achieve. Don’t get me wrong—I like Obama, he was the first President I voted for as a registered voter and have always given him the benefit of the doubt through the difficult decisions of his presidency, but the agenda he proposed for the coming years struck me as overly ambitious. Realistically, I understand that the purpose of the State of the Union in modern times is for the President to set the agenda for things he would like to work on with Congress. However, I think the fact that it is such a public address, (as a component of Neustadt’s “self-executed order”) gives it the ability to get people’s hopes up and possibly lead to disappointment if the proposed goals aren’t achieved.
Even so, I appreciated the tone Obama set for our country and society, especially with his opening statement of “we should not only focus on sitting here together tonight, but working together tomorrow”. The main points Obama focused on were the promotion of innovation, education developments, the literal and metaphorical rebuilding of America, fiscal responsibility, government reform, and general improvement of our international presence.The discussion of innovation promotion had somewhat of a Cold War-esque taste to it, since it was brought up in a competition mentality against other countries’ achievements but the overarching goal was related to environmental policies. The most specific goal mentioned was to eliminate tax funding for oil companies and transfer that funding to the development of clean fuel. By 2035 President Obama aims to have 80% of our electricity derived from clean energy sources.Education promotion was probably the agenda component I feel the most strongly about but again, a Cold War-esque competition rhetoric was employed. The President stated that we must promote math and science in the classroom and urged families to take responsibility for promoting the love for knowledge in their children’s interests. Obama appealed to older students through mentioning the implementation of a permanent tuition tax credit to promote college affordability and revitalizing community colleges. Rebuilding America took on a literal and metaphorical meaning. Obama said we needed to not only rebuild or nation’s infrastructure and therefore provide a multitude of jobs for people, but also reform the way we interact with overseas powers and reforming our policies, like healthcare. Fiscal responsibility was aimed at the immense amount of debt our country still owes which is supposedly going to be aided by cuts on military spending and the elimination for tax breaks for millionaires. The topic of governmental reform exemplified the definition of presidential power since Obama said he would veto any legislation that contained earmarks. Since Obama is up for re-election in about a year, this authoritative stance is important for him to establish somewhat of a resume of things he has accomplished while in power that he can later use in debates/the election process.
Overall, I felt like the dates Obama set as the end points for the effects of his proposals were silly. No one is going to hold him accountable for those dates since he will be long out of power by then. I also don’t know how much of this agenda he will be able to accomplish if we implement the cuts on domestic spending since it seems like too much will be going on at the same time. Finally, as a point brought up in Neustadt’s “self-executed” order, I feel like Obama needed to reevaluate if the officials he is proposing all of this to are actually able to execute his agenda since their personal opinions on the issues could vary and they may just be unable to get all of this accomplished at the same time. In this state of the union, Obama was asking our Congress to multitask like never before.
You stated that this speech is setting up a resume with certain stances. While people will look at such a "resume", they will also look at what he has failed to accomplish. You correctly pointed out that certain parts of his agenda where ambitious and he will be held accountable for not coming through,
ReplyDeleteWhile I see where you're coming from when you say that being as ambitious as President Obama was in his speech would be setting him up for failure in a sense, and disappointing the American public when not everything he talked about comes to fruition, however I disagree to an extent because I believe the American people have come to understand that the State of the Union address is little more than the President talking and they'll wait for action to further judge.
ReplyDeleteOther than that, I pretty much agree with most of what you said; especially that proposing dates to reach his goals that are so far off makes it so that he won't be held accountable if they are never met.
I agree with what you are saying about the overly ambitious goals Obama was projecting to the country. His time frames were unrealistic (like the year 2035 for his Clean Energy Initiative) that the public really would not see a change in the near future and for sure not in his presidency.
ReplyDeleteHis policies were limited, but the tone was the agenda-setting tone America always hopes for out of the president, so i think you nailed that straight on.