The State of the Union is...?

...stronger, I'd say, than most people give it credit for. The State of the President? A somewhat more complex question. All in all, though, I am excited for this speech, I think one way or another it will be a turning-point, and as an amateur political scientist at least that can't help but be fascinating.

   First, I do think this country is in better shape than people give it credit for. I think I agree with Jon Stewart that this country is very resilient and has a lot of resources; actually, I think I think that most every country is that. I keep hearing people, largely on Huffington Post, talking about how the "middle class is on the verge of collapse." To me, that just doesn't make sense. Has the middle-class had its status gradually eroded the past several decades? Well, yeah. And times are hard right now, and they're hard in a way that's hitting the middle class. But "collapse" doesn't strike me as the kind of thing that middle-classes do. Middle classes are inherently of the middle; they're a kind of buffer, both in and of themselves and how they function in society. Wild swings, of which a collapse is one variety, is not really the middle-class kind of thing. And for what it's worth, for liberals to talk about the middle-class incessantly is a kind of rhetorical compromise: we're scared to admit that we're actually concerned with the lower classes, the actual poor people. The middle class, by definition, is relatively affluent and has a fair amount of stability. Now, sure, as I said, middle-class-ism in this country has been on the decline, so it's getting hit harder by this economy than it likes to. But this economy isn't going to last forever. Thing get better, things are getting better. Maybe they're not getting better very fast; in fact, they really aren't getting better very fast. But they are getting better. Last year felt to me like the bottoming-out of everything wrong and bad and horrible that Reagan, Bush, & Co. did to this country and the world over the past thirty years; now we're on the upswing, if ever so gradually. And that doesn't portend "imminent collapse," for anything really, except maybe the climate situation, which is a different story and a different blog post.

As for the state of Obama's Presidency. I would be fascinated to see a poll of Obama approval split by Obama and Clinton primary voters. I bet 90% of Democrats who currently Disapprove of Obama voted for Clinton, and that's not because I think they're bad people but just because I think personal loyalties, likings, and dislikings come into play very genuinely. I don't think his Presidency is on the rocks, either; note that he has never yet dipped solidly into net-disapproval territory, and his favorabilities are as high as they were prior to his election. Yes, Republicans hate him, and Republican-esque independents hate him; that was always going to happen. Yeah, the lack of a supermajority is problematic, but not impossible to deal with. Now, I do think this speech is important. I hope he does bring out some fire-and-brimstone anti-corporatism, because that's the best messaging Democrats can have right now. I hope he manages to explain this so-called spending freeze in a way that satisfies critiques from the left, some of which are my own. If he can't, I hope he drops it, or at least lets the Congress have its way with it. I hope he calls on the Congress to pass health-care, and I hope he explains how it connects to the economy as a whole. I know he's going to address Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and I both hope and cautiously assume that he will speak out in favor of repeal. If he doesn't, if he endorses it or endorses inaction at the very least, he loses a lot of points in my book. I would genuinely like for him to address something about the whole global-warming debacle, but I'm not wildly optimistic; after all, people don't like to hear about warming during January. I think mainly I would like for him to try as little as possible to assuage people to his right about his policies; they dislike them anyway. He should be talking to his left, and he should ideally be using what Socrates would call "true speech" rather than "persuasive speech." That is, I'd rather he say, look at my ideas, they are liberal and progressive and all that, than have him say, here are my cautious, centrist ideas, here's why you liberals should support them. Basically I just haven't heard a nice ringing, clarion-call, soaring-rhetoric Obama speech in a while, and I'd like to see one of those. I don't see in Obama someone who will accept just doing nothing. I hope I'm right.

And I wouldn't mind it if he incorporated the phrase "New Foundation," either.