January 26, 2012
State of the Union or State of Re-Election?
With his fourth State of the Union in the bag as of this past Tuesday night, the pundits (and anyone with a brain for that matter) agree: President Obama’s singular goal for the next four years is to get re-elected as President of the United States. In a speech designed to sound statesman-like, centrist yet still drawing distinctions with Republicans and overly optimistic (in the face of obvious facts that say otherwise), the President delivered a State of the Union Address that was utterly devoid of the ideas and solutions it will take to get America working again while overtly full of the platitudes typical of a politician on the ropes in an election year. And who could blame him? By all measures of recent history, the State of the Union has largely become a grandiose political event of the largest scale: an incumbent President using the visibility and free media afforded to the office to pitch a re-election campaign speech to Americans who take the time to listen for over an hour. But even more than that, who could blame Republicans, and especially College Republicans, for calling him out on his failures, both in the speech and in his first term? Forget Newt Gingrich’s marital baggage or Mitt Romney’s tax returns, this President has given himself 3 years of baggage that 300 plus million Americans have had to deal with in the here and now. That’s the issue that will matter on Election Day come November, not personal decisions of decades past or the Democratic Machine’s obsessive drive for one man to apologize for living the American Dream. We need results, not the empty rhetoric of hope in the pursuit of votes. We need real change, not the empty rhetoric of change on the backdrop of 18 holes of golf. We need to unleash the American People to restore the American Dream. On that note, kudos to Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels on what was probably the best response to a State of the Union in recent memory. In a room devoid of an audience or applause, the Governor offered a vision to the American people grounded in reality and substantiated by the simple truth that America is still the greatest nation on the face of the Earth, in spite of Washington’s best efforts. He didn’t offer platitudes for the campaign trail; he offered solutions. He didn’t offer unfounded promises while denying he reality; he offered facts and the stark reality that it is going to take a real leader in the White House to make the real difference that it will take to get America working again. “We do not accept that our nation will be a nation of haves and have notes; we must always be a nation of haves and soon to haves.” -Brandon Howell, Senior Advisor |
