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.

Citizen Obama

So, that was a pretty good speech. Not one of his entries in the annals of great American rhetoric, but a very solid group of policy proposals with some very nice philosophical defense of liberalism sprinkled in. Of course, none of the stuff will happen, but it's nice to see him advocating good stuff nonetheless.

The thing I noticed in particular, though, was the continuation of Obama's "citizen" theme. I don't remember whether it was in the Inaugural or some slightly previous speech, but there was a nice long passage about citizenship at some point over the past couple of months. (Possibly his election victory speech, actually.) I like this because it's more than a mere ideological philosophy (though those are good too), it's an actual political philosophy. And it's an important one. I don't have a lot of original stuff to say on the subject, but I've been thinking over the course of the past couple of days about how categorically different democratic government and non-democratic government are. In fact, I think that describing them that way is misleading. It makes it sound like they're two somewhat different ways of doing the same thing, "government." That's wrong. Democratic governance is, ultimately, the process by which the peoples of a nation come together to make decisions about the direction of their society. Non-democratic "governance" is when some completely random person, or group of persons, who happens to have a lot of dudes with guns loyal to and/or paid by him (it's usually, but not always, a him), sets up in the middle of some country and tells everyone in said country that, if they don't do exactly what this "sovereign" says, they'll be killed. Those aren't the same thing at all.

Get It Together, President Obama

No, that's not about the economy, jobs, the deficit, gay marriage, dealing with Congressional Republicans, or really anything else for that matter. It's about sloganeering, specifically the apparent frame for his upcoming State of the Union address: "an America built to last." This is, to my mind, another pathetic failure to use "A New Foundation" as the President's catch-phrase. As regular readers know, assuming there are any, I've been advocating for this as the President's catch-phrase for two years come tomorrow. Obama's "Win the Future" line was similarly trying to get at the same idea as "A New Foundation," but did so by sounding incredibly silly and being extremely easy to mock on Twitter. "Built to last" is a car commercial-level slogan. "A New Foundation" is the exact same slogan, except that it doesn't suck! It's the same image of a new, robust version of our country, except instead of sounding like a sleazy auto salesman it's cut from the very same cloth as such progressive agendas as the New Deal, Fair Deal, Square Deal, New Frontier, and Great Society. It's not even really a slogan: while it is a catch-phrase, it's more of a title than a description.

And yet, he continues not to see it. This is a sad day for American rhetorical framing devices.