A Change We Can Believe In...?

In the words of our great current president, “ the State of the Union address has been a tradition for 220 years,” and the tradition continued last week amidst continued concerns surrounding the housing crisis, economic uncertainty, and exponential national debt. But don’t worry; our fair president assured us all that “the worst of the storm has passed.” Despite promises tax-credits for businesses, transparency in healthcare deliberations, and an end to the Iraq War. I don’t see why those broken promises should deter us from believing this one.

While this speech was probably first being written as early as November, I am almost positive it had to be changed substantially after the election of Scott Brown as the new Massachusetts senator. While I can speculate on the tone of the speech had a democrat been elected, the address Obama actually delivered went something like this: bipartisan corporation…republicans and democrats together…bother sides of the aisle…let’s come together, right now. (Well maybe that last one wasn’t quite how Barack said it, either way, the full text version can be found here.) Unfortunately, it seems the presidents’ aides did not finish editing the speech to, in fact, appeal to the left and the right, because his oh-so motivating speech ended on a bit of a sour note.

With regard to spending, according to Obama, cutting taxes and federal spending is “what helped lead to these deficits.” After which he makes a blatant reference to G-dub, which certainly didn’t function to foster a more bipartisan government.

He then proceeded to criticize the Supreme Courts’ decision to allow corporations to act as individuals. This order allows these private entities to advertise for particular candidates, and will lead to substantially increased campaign contributions by corporations. Perhaps the Prez forgot he was the one who appointed Sotomayor to the justice bench. Two responses to that: first, the Supreme Court actually doesn’t make decisions based on their own policy preferences (or they shouldn’t), but rather adheres to the constitution as closely as possible. Perhaps he should take that criticism up with Thomas Jefferson. Second, you, Barack Obama, received more support from private corporations than John McCain! You garnered more than twice the contributions than McCain—396,000,000 dollars give or take. So in my humble opinion, you should be the last to complain about such a decision.

In his final State of the Union address, Ronald Reagan said, “we're strong, prosperous, at peace, and we are free. This is the state of our Union…I believe we can give a future President and a future Congress the chance to make that prosperity, that peace, that freedom, not just the state of our Union, but the state of our world.” These words have been the inspiration and goal of many a president since 1988. Unfortunately, Barack Obama was not able to stand in front of the nation to which he is accountable and declare that we are the nation of strength, prosperity, peace, and freedom. Rather, according to Mr. President, “change has not come fast enough”. And despite the promises I have heard over and over throughout the past 3 years, I have to wonder if it ever will.