I call the following rhetoric from the State of the Union speech ‘aspirational,’ because it isn’t objectively true or false. It’s a call for all of us to be better people and better citizens. It generously praises us for things many of us have not done and for a character we may not have. But we’re welcome to earn the praise, and that is what he is inviting us to do.
You know what else [the American people] share? They share a stubborn resilience in the face of adversity. After one of the most difficult years in our history, they remain busy building cars and teaching kids; starting businesses and going back to school. They’re coaching little league and helping their neighbors. As one woman wrote me, “We are strained but hopeful, struggling but encouraged.”
It is because of this spirit – this great decency and great strength – that I have never been more hopeful about America’s future than I am tonight. Despite our hardships, our union is strong. We do not give up. We do not quit. We do not allow fear or division to break our spirit. In this new decade, it’s time the American people get a government that matches their decency; that embodies their strength.
You know, sometimes our division comes close to breaking my spirit. So, like many others, I can use a pep-talk from time to time. Obama is good at this type of thing. The danger is that soaring rhetoric that is not matched by soaring accomplishment can lead to the criticism that Obama is ‘just words,’ as the Clinton supporters charged so often. This is something the Republicans understand very well. They are using unprecedented stalling and obstructive tactics to prevent Obama from passing his biggest bills and to slow his progress on appointments and smaller goals. They know that the Democratic base is impatient. They know that the Democratic base is repulsed when Obama is forced to craft all his legislation to the liking of the most conservative members of his own party. They know that their own base is charged up when they use every oppositional device at their disposal.
A debate opened up on the left as soon as Obama began announcing his cabinet. Was Obama going to get any bang for his buck by appointing Republicans and centrist Democrats to his cabinet? Would it make it easier to govern? Would it win him some votes from the Republicans in Congress? Would it inoculate him against some partisan attacks when he made tough choices on national security? Or, was he just giving away valuable jobs and setting himself up to get shitty advice without getting anything in return?
And this debate has continued throughout the first year of his presidency, particularly with regard to the efforts to get some Republican support for the health care reform bill. In the end, Obama lost several valuable months, including the narrow window where we had 60 senate votes, by trying to win over Republican support that he had very little chance of obtaining.
Yet, Obama hasn’t given up on one his core messages. Post-partisanship is a key component of the ‘change we can believe in.’
In the end, it is our ideals, our values, that built America – values that allowed us to forge a nation made up of immigrants from every corner of the globe; values that drive our citizens still. Every day, Americans meet their responsibilities to their families and their employers. Time and again, they lend a hand to their neighbors and give back to their country. They take pride in their labor, and are generous in spirit. These aren’t Republican values or Democratic values they’re living by; business values or labor values. They are American values.
Unfortunately, too many of our citizens have lost faith that our biggest institutions – our corporations, our media, and yes, our government – still reflect these same values. Each of these institutions are full of honorable men and women doing important work that helps our country prosper. But each time a CEO rewards himself for failure, or a banker puts the rest of us at risk for his own selfish gain, people’s doubts grow. Each time lobbyists game the system or politicians tear each other down instead of lifting this country up, we lose faith. The more that TV pundits reduce serious debates into silly arguments, and big issues into sound bites, our citizens turn away.
No wonder there’s so much cynicism out there.
No wonder there’s so much disappointment.
I campaigned on the promise of change – change we can believe in, the slogan went. And right now, I know there are many Americans who aren’t sure if they still believe we can change – or at least, that I can deliver it.
This is the kind of aspirational language that Obama excels at delivering…appealing to our better angels, telling us we are good, but that we can do better. It’s a key element of his appeal, but what if we aren’t good and we can’t do better? What if our institutions are fatally flawed? What then? Because that is how things feel right now. Obama’s answer?
But remember this – I never suggested that change would be easy, or that I can do it alone. Democracy in a nation of three hundred million people can be noisy and messy and complicated. And when you try to do big things and make big changes, it stirs passions and controversy. That’s just how it is.
Those of us in public office can respond to this reality by playing it safe and avoid telling hard truths. We can do what’s necessary to keep our poll numbers high, and get through the next election instead of doing what’s best for the next generation.
But I also know this: if people had made that decision fifty years ago or one hundred years ago or two hundred years ago, we wouldn’t be here tonight. The only reason we are is because generations of Americans were unafraid to do what was hard; to do what was needed even when success was uncertain; to do what it took to keep the dream of this nation alive for their children and grandchildren.
Again, I don’t think that telling of history is objectively true, but is calls for us to make it true in our own time. The problem is that bankers and CEOs and media executives and congresspeople are not going to change unless they are forced to change. And that is where the people can try to help Obama, or where they can blame him for the situation being ungovernable. That’s not to take Obama completely off the hook. He needs to bust some heads. He needs to take on his enemies rather than pleading with them to be reasonable. They’re not going to be reasonable. But, the truth remains, to get something done in Congress when the Republicans are pursuing a strategy of obstruction, you need a miracle. The election in Massachusetts was a miracle in the wrong direction.
Obama can’t abandon this aspirational language because it is important for us to hear and important to his success as a leader and a politician. But he must realize that happy-talk becomes empty blather if it isn’t matched by success. The Republicans know this. Obama ought to be clear about it, too.
The aspirational language, and the bipartisanship, is not in any way directed at Republican lawmakers after a year of disinformation and poor messaging; it’s a way to get inside the heads of independents and persuadable moderate Republicans. It is good politics in an election year.
The visuals of drowsy Republican hacks sitting on their hands rather than applauding tax cuts and calls to hold Wall Street accountable are political gold if used forcefully. The follow-up should be to force these scum into a series of votes against such things in such a way that it will hurt them in the fall with Scott Brown-type voters.
– Wikipedia
The object of the State of the Union address is to report to Congress and to persuade to follow the President’s leadership. Aspirational language is of the “let’s…” variety. “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”, said Roosevelt; it meant “Let’s stop fear for the future.” …and you can pull any President’s speech and it has the same purpose. Let’s not get so caught up in our individual goals that we forget public service – John F. Kennedy.
The partisanship in this country is the result of our choices. We choose to live as much as possible in enclaves of people like us, and as conservative rhetoric and progressive pressure for innovation and change have become intense, that means de facto political segregation layered on top of all the other ways we segregate ourselves. And that segregation has intensified as we have become fearful–of crime, of youth sex, of hate crimes, of drugs, of child abduction, of unemployment, of climate change, of terrorists, of endless war, of gun owners, of those who want to take away our guns, of abortion, of those who would murder or intimidate to prevent a woman from being able to make the choice about abortion… The fears are there; the Republicans in the 1970s made the choice to exploit them as wedge issues and now cannot stop themselves. After three lost elections, Democrats tried to ratchet it down and it resulted in an impeachment. After the Republican seizure of power in 2000 and the lost decade, mid-decade Democrats driven by progressives started to be as partisan as the Republicans. And all of a sudden “partisanship” became a problem that has come close to shutting down the US Senate. What it will take is persuasion for people to change the tone in politics and for politicians to feel the pressure of that change in tone.
The aspirational language persuades some, demonstrates serious intent to change the tone of politics to others, and most importantly contrasts with the tone set by the GOP. And it puts the purity-test conservatives on the defensive and begins to marginalize them.
Ordinary people (as opposed to political bloggers or pundits) don’t take the aspirational language as a commitment by the President, but they do take the policy statements as a commitment. But most of all they identify with a President who says what they would like to say in that situation. And what they would like to say is that Congress needs to get itself in order.
And most of all they take comfort in leaders who don’t criticize the country but can criticize the institutions that are harming the country. The “We’re Number One” is a bit of tribal exceptionalism but most folks intend it as a matter of unity for our tribe, a unity that crosses all the ways that we otherwise would be divided.
Aspirational rhetoric is so much a part of American political rhetoric that I am curious why it bothers you at this moment of history.
It doesn’t bother me at all.
Before Obama, we were in danger of losing our national identity – the collective vision of the US as a nation that stands for freedom, for human rights, for opportunity. I think Obama has a goal of restoring that vision, just as he has a goal of changing the tone in Washington. It’s not a specific policy objective, it’s moral leadership that was sorely lacking before he arrived on the scene.
Much of the “left” complaint about Obama is that he is not serving them a meal with fries, and they ordered fries.
We would already have a healthcare bill if he were willing to go the reconciliation route and fight for that. It would not have been bipartisan. It would not have been as comprehensive as could be accomplished with a more cooperative caucus or some Republican support. But we would have it already, and the mere threat of having it might have gotten us more cooperation from the likes of Lieberman and Nelson.
Instead, as if actually believing that the Republicans were interested in working with him, Obama took reconciliation off the table in the summer. It was the height of weakness and naivete.
Moreover, there is no evidence that Obama even believes in the sorts of reforms progressives care about. In other words, Obama wants HCR, but he doesn’t seem to care that much whether we have a public option or not or whether the power of the insurers is checked or not.
So, Obama is very much “on the hook”.
If you say so, but I doubt it.
http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/health-care/senate-aides-to-house-dems-back-off/
There’s more to this than meets the eye.
…and there was never any cost to pursuing a twin track strategy of putting together the best possible reconciliation bill along with the best possible 60-vote bill. At worst, the former would have come to nothing, and we’d be where we currently are + progressives would see that and have confidence that at least Obama tried.
As it stands, we just have to “take it on faith” that reconciliation was never a viable route.
Sorry, but I am done with “faith.”
“We would already have a healthcare bill if he were willing to go the reconciliation route and fight for that. “
Because, of course, the President controls the Senate – at least according to “progressives”.
The way I see it he took a big risk to go for the jackpot — HCR that cut across party lines. There’s nothing wrong with that ambition. Some would say the reward wasn’t worth the risk. In any case, the evidence is now in: “reaching out” only gets your hand chewed off. Obama has no more rational reason to keep hope alive for “bipartisan” solutions.
I hope he adjusts his strategies and policies accordingly. He is in a powerful position right now: he tried his best, but the Republicans forced us to go it alone if we’re going to get anything done and keep our promises. I hoped the SOTU would show us that he realizes that. There seemed to be some movement that way, but not the definitive statement I wanted. I think his presidency and his place in history hinge on whether he learned from the experience. So yet again, we’ll see. And soon, one way or another.
I’m not even asking for success. I’m asking for hard proof by actions that the President actually believes what he claims to believe.
how would you know?
why would you care?
If he would actually fight for something.
Because then I could accept the compromises as the best that could be gotten, not the capitulations of someone who cares more about doing something that doing something (that is) right.
Yes, because we should be aspirational but the MEN (oops, PEOPLE) we vote for shouldn’t be.
Good one, Boo.