I was tempted last night to write a response to the State of the Union address that would have been close to identical to Jamelle Bouie’s response. After all, I’m known for my pragmatism, and my practice is tell you what can and cannot happen. Something prevented me from writing that piece, and I went to bed instead without saying anything. I knew I needed time to digest what I had witnessed.
Whether or not the perception is overblown, the president has gained a reputation for promising only what he can realistically deliver. Some call it timidity. Some call it practicality. Some call it genius. But the president almost never picks a fight that he can’t win. In fact, the first time I can really remember him violating that rule was in the summer of 2011 after it became clear that no Grand Bargain would be achievable, and he introduced the American Jobs Act. He knew that the Republicans wouldn’t enact any part of his proposal, but he started campaigning for it anyway.
What distinguished last night’s State of the Union speech was precisely the lack of realism. Congress is not going to raise the minimum wage or pass cap-and-trade or fund universal preschool or ban assault weapons. They are not going to do almost anything that the president proposed. Even the emotional peroration of the speech was a pleading for Congress to simply allow a vote on a pared down set of gun violence proposals. It was stirring and effective, yes, but it was also the most powerful man on the planet plaintively begging Congress to consider a small proposal.
Yet, it felt like more than that. The whole speech felt like more than the sum of its parts. Parts were philosophical. In fact, his summation was philosophical.
We are citizens. It’s a word that doesn’t just describe our nationality or legal status. It describes the way we’re made. It describes what we believe. It captures the enduring idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations; that our rights are wrapped up in the rights of others; and that well into our third century as a nation, it remains the task of us all, as citizens of these United States, to be the authors of the next great chapter in our American story.
This was followed by Marco Rubio’s response that the government isn’t going to help you; it is only going to stand in your way. But Obama’s vision isn’t binary. Our government is made up of citizens. Our citizens form governments, large and small, to get things done for each other. If our governments can’t help us, then we cannot help ourselves. Obama’s vision is diametrically opposed to Reaganism precisely because it isn’t binary.
Faced with a Republican Party that is, by turns, nihilistic and filled with zeal, a pragmatic speech would have proposed little. A speech limited to promises and proposals that are likely to pass would have been a very short speech, indeed. The president chose a different path.
If the Republicans want to pretend that climate change isn’t occurring, that doesn’t mean that the president will be silent. If the GOP won’t consider good ideas, the president will talk about them anyway. Why accept the status quo? Why accept that almost nothing can be done in Washington so long as the Republicans have any sniff of power?
Anyone who argues that the president should have spent his time talking about the things that the two parties can agree about doesn’t understand how little they can agree about. By talking in grander and more ambitious terms, he invited Congress to snap out of the current crisis governance and expand the realm of the possible. But, if they won’t move willingly (and they won’t), Obama will take his case to the people and try to change the political landscape for the next election.
As Jamelle said, his speech may be less a map for the rest of his presidency than a signpost for the next president. But at least he didn’t accept that fate without a fight.
