I hope everyone watched the State of the Union speech last night.  I enjoyed the speech.  I hope everyone else did too.  However, I must first make my annual statement to demonstrate my consistency on one particular point regardless of who holds the White House.

We have one president at a time.  The president is Constitutionally obligated to annually advise the Congress as to the State of the Union.  The Constitution doesn’t actually mandate that this be a televised speech of a political nature or that it be delivered in person to a joint session of Congress but it also doesn’t say that the president should be there with an annual report complete with graphs to define the debt or any fund balance.  Even though the speech evolved into a political speech long ago there is one thing that makes me uncomfortable and that is the speech in opposition that immediately follows.  I believe Governor McDonnell’s speech from the Virginia House Chamber designed by Thomas Jefferson was among the best responses I have heard if only because of the venue and the live audience that was there to respond.  However there is something in my craw that says it is inappropriate for the “other party” to immediately deliver a rebuttal to the President’s SOTU message every year.  I do believe it is entirely proper to critique the speech ad nauseam and this is what I intend to do here.

The president did not disappoint me.  I have a close friend who called me yesterday afternoon and asked what I expected.  I told him that I didn’t expect the president to move to the center at all.  I told him that I expected him to be defiant and to continue to promote an aggressive front toward healthcare and all the other issues that have consumed the first year of his administration.   I told him that I regard Obama as a narcissist and that in his mind the only reason he can’t get the votes is that we haven’t thoroughly absorbed his arguments and he simply needs to explain it better.   Did I miss anything?

He continues to blame the Bush administration and he does what all senior managers do in the face of poor results.  He points at the poor results and tells us how much worse things would have been had he not been there.  He continues to talk about statistics that have to have been grabbed from the air.  They certainly have no substance if they cannot be proven.  I’d like to know where those 2 million jobs are that he saved with his economic stimulus considering that unemployment has gone to more than 10% when his stimulus promised to stop the climb in the unemployment rate at 8 or 8.5%.   

He continues to describe his policies as having saved us from a worse depression but just as President Roosevelt’s policies in retrospect were judged to have made things worse for our parent’s generation, Obama’s policies have made things worse as well.  There is nothing more suppressive to job creation than the uncertainty that his administration has caused.  Who can blame small businesses for waiting to see what Congress ultimately does when they are faced with a potential for significant increases in both health insurance premiums and taxes?  It has been proven three times now in my lifetime that when the nation enters a recessionary period the best tactic is to cut taxes.  This spurs economic growth in the private sector, creates job growth and this ultimately results in an increase of total revenues to the treasury.  Kennedy proved this, then Reagan and then Bush (43).  But Obama instead chooses to increase taxes, selectively punish specific industries and push cash into the pockets of a few that is unearned and creates no economic growth. 

He threw a crumb or two to conservatives but does anyone believe for a moment that offshore exploration for oil, the construction of nuclear power plants or removal of barriers to clean coal production will come in anything that is not a comprehensive climate control bill as discussed in Copenhagen?  This is disingenuous at the very best.  Personally, I am not willing to cut off my hand to be able to keep my thumb.  It makes no sense.  He also announced a freeze in what he defines as discretionary spending.  How much of a savings is it when he freezes a budget to save $25 billion per year beginning in 2011 on a budget that he increased in 2010 by $140 billion?  Has anyone ever gone into a department store and winced at a half off sale when the merchandise was obviously overpriced by a factor of three to begin with?  Folks, that’s no sale. 

Could he have been more arrogant than he was to denounce the recent decision of the Supreme Court in that venue with them in attendance?  It was disrespectful and his statement “in all due deference to separation of powers” does not provide him license to be a boor, especially when he is wrong.  Alito knew him to be wrong and in a silent Joe Wilson moment he said so in a way that was still identifiable to the camera if not the microphone.  “That’s not true,” is how I read his lips. 

Finally we have a court that read and interpreted the Constitution as written rather than as they would like it to be.  At least five of the members were true to their oath and to their profession.  If only Obama would also read the document he would also understand that Congress has no ability to pass a bill that would deny freedom of speech to corporations as he suggested in his presentation.  And this guy was once a Constitutional professor?  Oh, I suppose they might be able to deny corporations the identity of being a person but if they do this I wonder what the ramifications would be as to their ability to contract with anyone or to pay taxes?  Now, I’m not a Constitutional lawyer or professor either but there is an old adage that one should be careful what they wish for because they just might get it.  As a matter of fact, this is where many Americans are today.  They wished the Bush administration away, considered McCain too similar and voted for this guy who offered hope and change.  Well, how is that hope and change working out for everyone else?

So, with all these statements (I could include more) how could I also say that I enjoyed the speech?  I enjoyed this speech because Obama proved himself unable to reflect upon the weakness of his own ideology.  Had he actually moved toward the center a little and admitted that the public did not want his Healthcare Bill and did not want Cap and Trade; if he could accept that people do not want a second economic stimulus or that any of his unpopular ideas are worthy of reconsideration by him, not us, perhaps he might have saved a seat or two that it appears his party will lose in November.  My advice for all is that conservatives and republicans stand their ground in 2010 and that democrats run for cover.  There is a movement underfoot that is truly grassroots and is likely to make Nancy Pelosi surrender the gavel in 2011 and Harry Reid become a lobbyist.