Barack Obama’s Reassuringly Vacuous State of the Union Address
President Barack Obama’s second State of the Union Address was almost entirely focused on domestic issues. This was appropriate considering the magnitude of social, economic and moral problems America is facing, and the attendant absurdity of pursuing grand global themes for as long as those problems remain unresolved.
The clichés and the rhetoric were kitchy and old-fashinedly quaint. At least Obama did not give us any of his predecessor’s neocon-infested world-historical drivel (“History has called America and our allies to action, and it is both our responsibility and our privilege to fight freedom’s fight… America will always stand firm for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity… We’ve come to know truths that we will never question: Evil is real, and it must be opposed.”) What we have instead is a chief executive visibly reluctant to engage in foreign dragon-slaying missions. An inoffensive Latin American tour is on the cards instead, exactly the sort of stuff the President should do when he decides to do nothing.
Obama mentioned the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan—two doomed wars inherited from his predecessor—and steered clear of the old caveat about “getting the job done.” No “job” is ever “done” by a non-Muslim power in the Islamic heartland, which Iraq illustrates today, and which Afghanistan has proven on four occasions over the past 175-odd years. That both will revert to their nasty and brutish Hobbesian-Mohammedan ways once the last GI departs is obvious. Judging by his speech Obama knows this. His en-passant pledge that the U.S. “stands with the people of Tunisia” is reassuringly meaningless: presumably the “standing” will continue regardless of whether the Islamists take over, which is likely, or the country turns into a beacon of Western-style democracy in North Africa, which is not.
Not a single word about the Arab-Israeli conflict in the State of the Union is excellent news. For the moment the best U.S. policy in the Middle East is passivity. Over the next year or two Washington should leave Israel and its Arab neighbors to their own devices. We are further away from a comprehensive settlement than at any time since Oslo two decades ago. Prime Minister Netanyahu is not in a mood to offer anything to the Palestinians, and they are not in a position to insist on anything. As I wrote in Chronicles five months ago, those Americans who contend that the U.S. has the moral obligation to bring an end to the conflict should recognize that, like in many other national, religious and ethnic conflicts around the world, it will go on if both sides are willing to pay the costs of what they regard as a just and necessary fight: “No outside deus-ex-machina can save the parties from themselves. Not unlike other wars, the Arab-Israeli war will end when both sides grow weary of it and conclude that their interests would be better served at the negotiating table, with the outcome of such negotiations reflecting the balance of power between them.”
Since the parties in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute are unable or unwilling to do so today, Obama is right to stay aloof. Only when both sides are exhausted by the conflict and ready to make peace should the United States mediate a settlement. Only then some reference to the U.S. effort deserves to be made in the State of the Union address. This was not one such occasion.
Iran and North Korea were mentioned only in passim, which is also excellent news. On Iran the neocons have been trying long and hard to impose their agenda on a reluctant President, and judging by his perfunctory reference to the issue they have not succeeded. If and when the regional nuclear menace from Iran becomes real, those who have reason to feel threatened by it should act to curtail it or eliminate it as they deem fit. The riddle of Iran’s nuclear intentions is not a vital national security issue for the U.S.
As for North Korea, American disengagement from the peninsula is long overdue. The best and safest way to accomplish it is to leave the tactical and short-range nuclear arsenal behind, thus enabling South Korea to deal with Comrade Kim on its own. Obama may not subscribe to this view, but by wisely ignoring Pyongyang in his purview he has at least allowed for the possibility that he does.
My only problem with Obama’s speech was the millenerian phrase “winning the future.” The future is not there to be won or lost. Those who believe otherwise end up singing “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” and slaughtering millions. Obama is not in that league. On other fronts he is a failure and a menace, but on world affairs he is the least bad President we’ve had for a generation.
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Exactly right, Srdja. I was comforted by the absence in the speech of the imperial boilerplate that has become so much a part of the tradition in these usually tedious addresses. Flat is the word, indeed. Our modern Demosthenes roused us to the peak of apathy. One note to recall: the Secretary of State made some comment recently indicating we would not abandon Afghanistan till the status of women in that country was assured!
I did not listen to the State of the Union Address, but apparently, President Obama also did not mention "gun violence" or "gun control," omissions strenously lamented by post-speech commentators. Too bad! I understand that gun sales went off the chart after the lamentable shooting in Arizona followed by talk of gun control in the media. (Talk about "knee-jerk" reaction, or, dare I say?, "shooting from the hip," on both sides!) Apparently, President Obama has some astute speech writers, much better than those of the previous President.
I was just hopping he may mention Canada as a partner in resolving those “bigger than politics” problems. It may happen that “investing in better research and innovation” north of the border UAS manages to build that Sputnik, though Obama said Americans promised themselves the moon without a clue how to get there.
Dr. Trifkovic,
Israel has welcomed peace at any time and is no more waging war against Palestinian Arabs than the Serbs have been waging war on those 'tormented' Muslims outside of Serbia.
The situations are the same: the non-Muslims aren't attacking any Muslims.
I concur that the US should stay out of it, and peace would result if the US stopped funding the UNRWA (which in turn funds the PLO and Hamas). All Arab regimes are too stingy to fund this worthless UN body, but somehow the US is able to foot the bill, year after year after year...
President who?
Is it just me or has Obama suddenly become, or started to show that he always was, a lot more intelligent? Pat Buchanan's columns have indicated this change.
Maybe it's because Rahm Emmanuel left and Obama is without the party whips on him, so he can more easily speak his mind. He condemned the opportunists exploiting the Tuscon massacre, he agreed not to raise taxes in order to get unemployment benefits for the deserving few, he even cut estate taxes because of the practical reality that families have to liquidate assets to pay them, he stealthily allowed businesses to expense assets and reduce tax liability, and refused to side with partisan agendas. At least what I gather from stuff that Buchanan and Krugman have written.
I am starting to have the feeling that Obama is not really a "left winger" or a "right winger", assuming those words have any meaning, but a highly intelligent statesman who can change his stance when it is politically profitable. That kind of flip-flopping may reek of lack of principle, but principles in politics? At least as a statesman, he seems much more clever than many may imagine. Some had guessed so way back when he could still confront an intellectual heavyweight like Netanyahu and extract concessions.
Ground Control to Prateek : Do not step out of the capsule, even if you dare.
He's dealing with a fair amount of (admittedly poorly focused) popular indignation. So he knows not to overplay his hand. But he's still a leftist who will move us in that direction as much as he can.
Sure, Bruce. But what I find interesting is that much of the pro-public sector, pro-social planning politics dominant across the world for 70-80 years has been such that the leading statesmen and mediapersons could pretend their opposition was nonexistent and irrelevant. It then slowly changed to mild irritation. Now, it's like they can act like they sincerely believe in some of what their opposition says and even throw a few bread crumbs.
That's progress!
And, in general, the left has momentum on their side and has for a long time. So a wise leftist with self restraint who thinks to the future and can pace himself will do everything he can to put on the appearance of a centrist.
He’s brighter (or at least less stupid) than Bush was.
I think that economic reality has finally caught everyone's attention. Take Social Security for example. Latest report is that the so-called trust fund will be exhausted by 2037 (and of course that date keeps changing for the worse with every projection). SS is already paying out more each year than it takes in, so that means SS must draw on the trust fund to make up the difference. But there is no money in the trust fund, only IOUs, backed by "Treasury bonds and the faith and credit of the United States government," as Sen. Bernie Sanders, says. But the entire government is spending more than it takes in each year, so the government has to borrow more money to pay off the trust fund IOUs (Treasury bonds). But of course the debt due to the borrowed money will also be backed by Treasury bonds and the faith and credit of the United States government. Well you can see where this is going. The reality is that the rest of the country is beginning to see where this is going, too. In order to stop the flow of red ink, the government has to face reality and raise taxes and reduce expenditures. That will be difficult, but necessary. In addition, it will be easier to cut foreign aid and other external expenditures than it will be to cut domestic spending.
@4
"..He condemned the opportunists exploiting the Tuscon massacre.."
You mean like himself? It was sickening watching the first day or two after the shooting, and much of the coverage was on what Obama would do, what Obama would say, etc. The attention was threat on Obama - like we should care what the empty suit thinks - instead of the shooting victims.
*'was thrown' should replace 'was threat'. Really wish this site had an edit function.
#13 "Really wish this site had an edit function."
Daniel,
Me too but it would take too much time for the editors and I think the old Professor Fleming gets a big hoot out of some of our more notorious blunders. It is the least that we can do for him and humility is cultivated by humiliations. Nothing more humbling for a blogger than to see his many errors forever posted like cracks on the walls of a crumbling old home. In fact it is probably appropriate for this site that the posts bleed imperfections.
#7 r. a. schultz, "Ground Control to Prateek : Do not step out of the capsule,..."
It is good that humor is offered from time to time. Humor, honest charity, friendship and music can sustain the strong man for years after politics, ideology and rotten novels have failed him. I must say that I suspect Mr. Sanjay is a good man with his gaze fixed on the horizon like a thirsty soul lost in a vast desert. I can not blame him for mistaking water for the glare of heat rising. Given enough time and exposure to the desert, the definition of potable water begins to change.
Shouldn't it be "mistaking glare of heat rising for water"?
Either way, even if in my best days I would say that no statesman is ever beneficial to the people he rules, sometimes I wouldn't mind a man like Binyamin Netanyahu being a head of state in my country (or maybe even world leader). I thought it was a stunning coincidence when I saw, "Netanyahu for President" on Chronicles, because it was right after I was wondering what he'd be like for all South Asia. That man is a former commando who rescued his countrymen in hostage crises, highly accomplished consultant who rose high in the corporate world when he was still young, a well read and broadly read student of many fields, a veteran diplomat, and an eloquent tough talker. When I hear him defend his government's actions and what his fellow people believe, I can not say a bad word about Israel.
I often wonder if many Americans during election time had believed Barack Obama to be what Binyamin Netanyahu actually is - a serious, intelligent, ruthlessly pragmatic, but patriotic statesman. Intelligent may be an understatement, because he seems rather enlightened when he speaks of history, tradition, law, and other things.
It's only that those few incidents made me suspect for a while that Obama perhaps may be indeed a Netanyahu.
Prateek,
The way we Americans select "our public leaders" is very convoluted. For instance somebody told me that Mr. Obama mentioned education some dozen times in his State of the Union comments. There enthusaism for his concern reminded me of an old Chesterton observation that I quite agree with:
"The snag in it is this: that the self-educated think far too much of education. I might add that the half-educated always think everything of education. That is not a fact that appears on the surface of the social plan or ideal; it is the sort of thing that can only be discovered by experience. When I said that I wanted the popular feeling to find political expression, I meant the actual and autochthonous popular feeling as it can be found in third-class carriages and bean-feasts and bank-holiday crowds; and especially, of course (for the earnest social seeker after truth), in public-houses. I thought, and I still think, that these people are right on a vast number of things on which the fashionable leaders are wrong. The snag is that when one of these people begins to "improve himself" it is exactly at that moment that I begin to doubt whether it is an improvement. He seems to me to collect with remarkable rapidity a number of superstitions, of which the most blind and benighted is what may be called the Superstition of School. He regards School, not as a normal social institution to be fitted in to other social institutions, like Home and Church and State; but as some sort of entirely supernormal and miraculous moral factory, in which perfect men and women are made by magic. To this idolatry of School he is ready to sacrifice Home and History and Humanity, with all its instincts and possibilities, at a moment's notice. To this idol he will make any sacrifice, especially human sacrifice. And at the back of the mind, especially of the best men of this sort, there is almost always one of two variants of the same concentrated conception: either "If I had not been to School I should not be the great man I am now," or else "If I had been to school I should be even greater than I am." Let none say that I am scoffing at uneducated people; it is not their uneducation but their education that I scoff at. Let none mistake this for a sneer at the half-educated; what I dislike is the educated half. But I dislike it, not because I dislike education, but because, given the modern philosophy or absence of philosophy, education is turned against itself, destroying that very sense of variety and proportion which it is the object of education to give."
robert @17 - To paraphrase: first we kill all the teachers, especially those who call themselves "educators."
Andrew,
This is what Shakespeare suggested about lawyers!! I would prefer to introduce the eager student to the few teachers I still know. when I think the student may be ready. I was reading a little book the other day about several excellent teachers. One was 91 years old when he stopped teaching the art of fencing to willing students. Education is a large subject of course but I have known a few memorable teachers in my time and at least one of the key ingredients is they know something from the inside out, which is to say they have loved a subject before coming to know it. I do not know for sure but I suspect the theologians are correct when they assert the beatific vision consists more in knowing God as oppossed to loving Him. This natural desire (or love) for Him, supposedly is a pre-lude to knowing Him. " My heart will not rest until ...., My heart thirsts for Thee like a hind thirsting for water. ( And as any Southern deer hunter knows,a wounded deer aways heads to water)
Some have insisted that good teachers must love their students but this seems to me to ask too much, so I think it is enough if the student loves his teacher -- or what is the same thing, the teacher is lovable -- What an old monk once described to me as large hearted as opposed to narrow hearted.
It is remarkable that one can still find such men in the most unlikely places. I have always found my trips to Rockford and the various teachers that they invite to be qualified in both respects and have therefore introduced my own sons and daughters to them on those rare occassions when it would not appear their Father was forcing such introductions. By the questions they have asked me, sometimes months and years later, I think it is still possible to stir a minor sense of wonder and at least plant a seed of something more beautiful than the normal college experience provides. But one must be willing to work at it dilligently and even spend more money than he would need to spend in a happier age.
This reader is pleased to find the usual sagacity at least in your remarks Dr. Trifkovic.
Knowing well the American slaves-collar bound to Australia's neck, I once was of the habit of listening to the Address.
I can't remember exactly when I grew intolerably exasperated with hearing the current lie of the day.
#20 Peter,
Unfortunately it was not possible for me to watch the theatrical display but I was pleased to hear from friends that both parties ended their don't ask don't tell policy, came out of the closet, admitted duopoly and sat together as one party. The lion and lamb, billy goat and troll, Wall Street and Main Street,conservative and liberal -- all these meaningless distinctions used for years to keep the charade going were finally admitted to be fraudulent and were abandoned. They all sat together, clapped together, wept together, held hands, sang Kumbaya and for one brief shining moment, acted more honestly about their real differences (None) since they all acted appalled by Richard Nixon's language in the Oval Office. Sounded like a breath of fresh air to me.
... should the United States mediate a settlement.
Why us? Because we've invested trillions over the years -- computing the compound interest since 1948. I see further meddling in their affairs as setting the stage for more hatred.
As my father said, "there's not enough of that lovely taka-taka-taka sound." He should know, he was a policeman there in 1948.
But Baruch Obama thankfully didn't bring it up. Anyway I was tipped off not to watch. It's high time to go back to submitting the SOTU address to congress in writing. It was the whole TV inspired date-night touchy-feely crap that tuned me out.
@2
Thanks for reminding me about post speech coverage. It only tells us how stupid the networks think we viewers are. I'm insulted.
@4 Pancho
The Isreali Defense Forces do harass the Arabs with time-wasting checkpoints. And every now and then there's shooting, and it can be out of frustration.
@18 Andrew -- good one!