Since most of President Obama’s initiatives were already familiar, the most notable aspect of Tuesday’s address was his tone: upbeat, unapologetic. Obama did not sound like a man whose party had just lost the Senate. (Senator Harry Reid, however, looked like that man.) Nor did he appear at all prepared to accept the limits that Republicans want to place on his Presidency. Last night, Obama had the punchy, self-assured air of a President on a roll, freed of old encumbrances (a narrow, nervous Democratic majority in the Senate) and buoyed by both a big jump in his approval ratings and, most important, a growing economy. “We have risen from recession freer to write our own future than any other nation on Earth,” he said. In recent months, as job creation has heated up, some Democrats have warned the President against this kind of ebullience. “People are in trouble,” the political strategist Stan Greenberg told the Times, after reportedly saying the same thing to David Simas, the White House political director. Indeed, many are, as Obama acknowledged last night. “Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well?” he asked. His legislative agenda—for example, his sixty-billion-dollar plan to make community college free for most students—shows his refusal to accept that reality, and aims squarely at the problem of income inequality. At the same time, Obama was unrestrained in his discussion of America’s economic progress—and the role that he has played in it. “At every step, we were told our goals were misguided or too ambitious, that we would crush jobs and explode deficits,” the President said. “Instead, we’ve seen the fastest economic growth in over a decade, our deficits cut by two-thirds, a stock market that has doubled, and health-care inflation at its lowest rate in fifty years.” Here he paused, savored these statistics, then ad-libbed: “This is good news, people.” A wink, a smile, a sideways glance. This is a man who is pleased with himself.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 05:15:35 +0000
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