Thoughts on Obama's first State of the Union speech

Some quick thoughts, nothing too in-depth:

- Good speech, as expected, but... is it just me, or does the empty rhetoric sound more obviously empty and dishonest now? I mean, politicians usually do a pretty good job of disguising it, especially in meticulously-prepared speeches, but there were a few parts where I thought even marginally-informed people might be groaning and thinking "oh, common...". Maybe just my take, though.

- Carbon credits bit was kinda funny; liked the joke about it being the thing the country needs right now. I mean, regardless of if you think pandering to the global warming cult is a worthwhile thing for our government to be doing with our money or not, you'd have to agree that imposing additional crippling costs on our few remaining industries in the middle of a recession when we're desperately struggling to preserve the limited viable private-sector industries which are left is the last thing the country needs right now. It was nice to have a bit of levity, intentional or not.

- The part about not being able to delay reforming health care any longer was supposed to be inspirational, I guess, expect the reason we haven't done so is not because we're lazy, but rather because not everyone in the country agrees that we want socialized medicine. I guess it's going to happen, though... just wish we could have held out a few more years, I was looking forward to a few more years of real medical progress and innovation in the US.

- Also thought the bit about everyone needing to make sacrifices, including Obama, followed almost immediately by how he will be funding everything he wants to do, and how all his agenda items are essential national priorities which must be done, was kinda humorous. Dark and sad funny, sure, but still kinda funny.

- Budget "ideas" and "plans" sound identical to every other president I've ever heard. "gonna cut the deficit by the end of my term", "there will be short-term higher costs", "identified large savings areas", "will cut [other party's favored areas]", etc. Blah blah.

Those were my quick thoughts; curious what other people's impressions are (I'm sure there will be much break-room talk among people who watched it and/or cared). Overall, I thought it was predictable, ho-hum, surprisingly hollow and false-ringing for such a high-profile speech.

Comments

  1. CJFebruary 27, 2009 at 10:35 AM

    I mean, regardless of if you think pandering to the global warming cult is a worthwhile thing for our government to be doing with our money or not, you'd have to agree that imposing additional crippling costs on our few remaining industries in the middle of a recession when we're desperately struggling to preserve the limited viable private-sector industries which are left is the last thing the country needs right now. It was nice to have a bit of levity, intentional or not.

    I thought we could have used more sacrifice, so I was happy to hear the line about carbon credits. Ignoring climate change is similar to deficit spending. You get huge amounts of energy by burning fuels, way more than people got before the industrial revolution using animal power, but the economic price comes in the future. I suspect technology will progress to the point where dealing with the effects of climate change will not be too onerous, but that’s no excuse to ignore the issue. When you burn stuff, you’re getting power and someone generations from now is going to pay for it.

    I was happy the speech started off on a note about us having focused on the short-term at the expense of the future for too long. Part of that is climate change. Part of that is debt. He talked about the deficit; It’s too bad he turned around and said we need to get debt flowing so more people (more marginal borrowers) can get into debt to buy cars, houses, and businesses.

    I agree that he sort-of implied we’ve ignored healthcare just because we haven’t gotten around to it when in reality we can’t agree. It’s going to be getting more complicated as advanced diagnostic tests can predict illness way in advance. This could make the insurance model obsolete since you can’t insure against a known outcome. But he didn’t get into these details. He just implied we’re going to have spend some gov’t money to insure that the poor have access to healthcare, which is true.

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