With no choice, Obama attempts to turn a corner

7:29 PM Thursday, January 28, 2010

President Barack Obama came out fighting in his State of the Union address Wednesday, Jan. 27, disappointing those who believe he should have his tail between his legs. He energetically defended his 2009 course.

He argued that his stimulus prevented an economic collapse that could have resulted in an unemployment rate twice what is. And he said the only big problem with his health care plan is that he didn’t make the case for it as effectively as he might have.

“I take my share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people,” he said. “And I know that with all the lobbying and horse-trading, this process left most Americans wondering what’s in it for them.”

Nor did he back off on energy, which some have expected to be the big partisan fight of 2010.

On gays-in-the-military, school funding and more, he did a lot to satisfy those who have supported him all along.

Of course, he emphasized the need for jobs. And he called for a new jobs bill.

And yet there was another tangent, too. He recognized — as he probably did even before Massachusetts — that, whether he was right in 2009 or not, he needs to turn a corner.

He acknowledged that his promise to be a reconciling president, a uniter, hasn’t been fulfilled. In truth, partisan hostility in Washington — and the nation — now exceeds even the level that he decried in the convention speech in 2004 that won him so much attention.

There are other reasons to adjust. Politically speaking, the problem isn’t that he lost his filibuster-proof majority when the Republicans won the special Senate election in Democratic Massachusetts this month. The problem is that the Democratic super-majority was artificial and fragile and was destined to disappear this November, anyway, in the normal course of things.

He has to find another way to govern in the long-term, whatever might have been possible in the immediate aftermath of his election.

Toward that end — and toward the goal of addressing the monstrous deficit that his first year made more monstrous — he proposed a freeze in domestic discretionary spending. That’s the part of the federal budget most disfavored by his conservative foes. It’s about an eighth of the budget.

The phrase refers, basically, to non-military, non-international spending that the government isn’t legally obliged to increase as more people apply for benefits such as Social Security, Medicare and veterans’ pensions.

Freezing domestic discretionary spending as a whole (the plan isn’t to freeze everything within it) will generate opposition from a lot of Democratic interest groups.

But, in the long run, it could help to deliver the message that the solution to the national debt problem won’t be achieved by anything easy. It’s not just a matter of cutting waste, as some political warriors suggest. It will require focus on, especially, health care, notwithstanding how intensely the president’s political opponents freaked out over his effort to cut projected increases in Medicare in his health care proposal.

The president strewed bows to the political right throughout the speech. In proposing tax breaks for small businesses that hire new people or increase wages, for example, he found a way to offer Republicans something they can accept, without himself embracing mindless, indiscriminate tax cuts.

The speech did not put to rest the concern of moderate Democrats in Congress and some independent voters that he is on an ideological toot. Some follow-through will be necessary. Meanwhile, he needs to do a better job of highlighting his conservative side, so as to rebut the relentless charges of extremism coming from the far right.

Many have noted that the president is in a politically weaker position today than when he took office, given both polls and elections. But that would likely be true no matter what course he had taken in 2009.

If he had taken a more moderate course — which would have resulted in nothing very important passing Congress — while the nation was suffering economically, he might still have had major problems in Massachusetts. Passivity in the face of crisis doesn’t win votes.

Still, he does have to address the specific concerns of the nation now. And those concerns grow, in some measure, out of his course of 2009.

With the glow of 2008 largely gone — and the economic crisis of early 2009 gone — he has a new set of challenges. He seems to recognize that, but doubts are reasonable.

— Cox News Service

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