Barack Obama Finally Revealed As A Liberal

I jest, of course. We've known he's a liberal for a long time. Back in 2008, the three main contenders for the Democratic nomination, Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards, were all basically mainstream, run-of-the-mill liberals, with Edwards perhaps a bit more economically populist than the other two. There aren't really any areas of heterodoxy, except that in his capacity as President he's done less to change some things than liberals would've liked, and has sometimes defended those things in the process. (Though he has usually also said stuff about how he'd like to reform them.) But, like a lot of basically liberal Democrats who are politicians with national or quasi-national aspirations, Obama has often had to be a bit skittish about some of his liberalism. There are some issues that are thought to be just so politically difficult that you don't want to talk about them very much, if you can help it.

But not today. Tonight's State of the Union Address was, well, pretty unremarkable in the way that most big speeches are unremarkable; it didn't really "change anything." But I was impressed with how unabashed Obama was about being a liberal Democrat. He basically outlined a pretty thorough broad-strokes policy platform for the American left, and issued a kind of unspoken dare to the Republicans to dislike his agenda (and to try and stop it). And that included, for what I think was the first time in his Presidency, spending a lot of time talking about environmental issues. And not just his usual somewhat weasely, politician-y "all of the above" nonsense, although that of course was there, too. No, some serious environmental stuff. Multiple minutes on climate change, and the need for clean energy. He said he was going to do some sort of executive action increasing conservation through federal lands, or something (it's hard to catch the details of these newly-announced policy proposals in real time, heh). I've long since resigned myself to the fact that we never get a satisfying amount of environmentalism in our Big Obama Speeches, but for once I didn't need to be. I had no complaints on that score.

Oh, and he talked about guns. I suppose he did that last year, too, when the Newtown shootings were very recent, and maybe the year before because Gabby Giffords' shooting was very recent. But this year, he didn't really have to. There have been shootings recently, the whitehouse.gov feed's graphics mentioned four in the last week, but no big national-news tragedies. And yet, talk about guns he did. That's long been a third rail of Democratic politics; the assumption is that Democrats can't talk about guns and win. Maybe that's not really true when Republicans defend positions so extreme that most gun owners don't even agree with them, allowing Democrats to simultaneously play offense and play to the crowd. But I got the sense that Obama didn't even care. He believes that gun control is the right thing to do, so he said so.

The impression I got was of a President who doesn't have to worry about re-election anymore, and knows it, and is enjoying the freedom that gives him. He can say what he wants, and perhaps more importantly he can do what he wants, insofar as he has the legal authority to do so. And so he's gonna do a lot less of the usual persistent appeasement of the hypothetical center, and much more just pursue a legitimately Democratic, liberal agenda. That's always been his agenda, I think; now he's just a bit less hesitant about flying his flag proudly for all to see. It's a breath of fresh air, and I would not be surprised if it's more effective politically than conventional wisdom would tend to suggest.