Obama's Speech to Congress: A Leader in the House

[firedupdem]

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/davidcorn/2009/02/obamas-speech-to-congress-a-le.html

An organized mind at work is a wonderful thing to watch. During his address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, President Barack Obama placed the mind of his presidency on display, and it was wonderfully organized. The speech--a State of the Union stand-in--presented a clear, mostly left-of-center agenda for his presidency and a series of forceful rationales for his proposed actions. Obama offered all this up with a now-familiar fair dose of charm and grace. It's been years since any BMOC in Washington has presented such an extensive and well-articulated plan for--dare one say it--change.

This was a political speech, so it had the predictable elements: Americans don't give up, we'll pull together and rise again. But the strategic thrust of the speech was deftly delivered: Obama declared that the crisis--make that, crises--of the moment offers opportunities for fundamental shifts in national policies related to the economy, energy, education, and health care. In other words, the current calamity provides additional cause to proceed rapidly and ambitiously on these fronts.

snip

AND THEN CAME JINDAL. The same cannot be said for Republican Louisiana Bobby Jindal's presidential prospects. He delivered the GOP response to Obama's speech, and he served up retro Republican nostrums. An American of Indian ancestry, he started out with class by hailing Obama for having "completed a redemptive journey that took our nation from Independence Hall to Gettysburg to the lunch counter and now, finally, the Oval Office."

snip

Policy-wise, Jindal had little to say except cut taxes, cut taxes, cut taxes. And during his brief response, he reminded the viewers eight times that Americans "can do anything." (He also tossed out false facts about Obama's stimulus bill.)

There aren't many--if any--Capitol Hill Republican whom the party would want to put on national display after an Obama speech. Jindal was chosen because he's young, he's the child of immigrants, and he speaks to the party's base. But he was far from dynamic, and he essentially just read the first (and now tattered) page of the GOP playbook: government sucks. If Jindal, who passes for a rising Republican star, and the GOP want to tie themselves to this weak mast in the middle of the current storm, Democrats at this stage don't have much to worry about.

[firedupdem]

1. A leader in the house!

Kicking my own thread because I love the title of this piece. After shrub and dick....we finally have a leader in the house!

[Kashka-Kat]

2. Yeah great speech - this from someone who remains deeply cynical/ distrustful of

politics & politicians. Who still is distrustful of stimulus plan for many reasons I wont go into right now.

But in his speech it seems he grasps the "whole," and the interconnectedness of all the pieces - health care, industrial decline, wars for profit, global warming/retooling for green industries, etc etc. etc.

Although - gotta say this, the part of me that has been burned by so many politicians from LBJ on (the start of my political awareness) the cynic part of me thought he sounded a bit like a bipolar person in a manic phase running off all these impossible grandiose dreams.

The thing is - they are possible. Humans, Americans in particular, have been capable of great things at certain times in history.

About 1/3 way thru we turned TV up loud and started cheering at things. My fave parts: when he named re-regulation of financial industry as something that needs to be done, when he called out "no-bid contracts in Iraq" as top money waster, ending tax breaks to corps shipping jobs overseas.

The word that came to me last night is that there was an "adult" in the house. i.e. capable of taking responsibility and not whining about how its not my fault like a 5 year old.

[Mass]

3. K&R - Good to see the adults back to power/