Chait, on "What Obama Is Really Trying to Do in the State of the Union Address":
Everything about Obama’s messaging--the image of vigorous unilateral action, the laser focus on jobs, the small but popular policy initiatives attached to it--serve the goal of patching up the president’s standing and framing the Washington story in the most favorable terms possible. The State of the Union address is not an effort to fundamentally reorient the administration’s strategy. It’s a campaign to mend the political damage from the botched Obamacare launch.
I agree with Chait's final point, for to disagree would be to deny the undeniable. Yet Chait writes approvingly of the administration's non-reorientation strategy, meaning more non-belligerence, and there I'm in violent disagreement.
Not to be too soap operatic, but like sands through the hourglass, Obama's time is being steadily sucked into oblivion. He now has a mere nine months to recapture the electorate's interest in all things governmental--and by that I mean responsible governance--before facing another, and final, two years of the opposition's barbaric depredations. This is it, nine months, a very narrow opportunity to retake the House and fortify the Senate. And touting new EPA regulations, filibuster reform, Dodd-Frank rules or minimum-wage hikes for the federally contracted won't do it. These are not the platforms of popular enthusiasm.
As godawful as SOTU addresses have been for years, some people do still watch--thus tonight is the night to really blow their minds. Lay into Republicans, which is to say, lay into the problem of irresponsible governance--that which has so alienated the populace, which nonetheless awaits direction on a way out of this mess and still harbors some hope that it can be accomplished. That, after all, is Obama's virtuosity. It's regrettable that he hasn't been playing much lately.
Regrettable for us, but even more so for Obama in presidential retirement, as he watches President Hillary Clinton get historic credit for presiding over the barbarians' collapse. There will be something profoundly distasteful and even metaphysically unjust about that, for it's Obama who's suffered their depredations and has earned the right to finish them off. But he's got to do it. And he can only do it by laying into them.
If he takes a pass on this, he'll regret it. History will show that this eight-year president was cooked after two, because he failed to strike back when it mattered the most.
Wanna bet, Jonathan?