We’re too wise, too hip to Obama-speak, to get seduced by a single Barack Obama speech any more.
We know he’s good at this, which doesn’t necessarily translate into being good at the other stuff required to be effective at governing.
But Obama’s State of the Union speech was not about rhetoric. It wasn’t about policy, either. It was all about attitude.
He didn’t tack left or right. Sure, he gave a nod to populism with a brief anti-bank rant, but he didn’t go all William Jennings Bryan on us. And, yes, he gave a nod to fiscal conservatism with his proposed three-year freeze on discretionary spending, but that hardly placed him as a neo-Hooverist. He even offered an end to don’t ask, don’t tell for liberals, but this was not a something-for- all speech.
The message of the speech was clear: It had been a tough first year. He had made some mistakes, but he was sure the mistakes were mostly tactical — more about the process than about the product. He had spent too much time working from the inside, hand in hand with Congress, when the voters had expressly said they wanted someone who could work from the outside, with them.
He thought the job was to be like heavy-on-process LBJ when it was, in fact, to be more like heavy-on-narrative Ronald Reagan, if you can picture a Reagan from the left. Obama said he got it. And if he didn’t get it before Scott Brown drove his pickup straight through Obama’s health care bill, he definitely got it afterward.
The key line from the speech was this: “I campaigned on the promise of change — change we can believe in, the slogan went,” he said. “And right now, I know there are many Americans who aren’t sure if they still believe we can change — or that I can deliver it.”
But Obama, you could tell, had no doubts and didn’t really think you should, either.
It’s not surprising how cool Obama was during the speech. He wasn’t professorial, above-the-fray cool. It was more like a scene from “Game Change,” the hot new book on the 2008 campaign. This scene came soon after the Republican convention and the advent of Sarah Palin, when some Democrats were in full panic. Obama’s friend and aide, Valerie Jarrett, sent him a copy of a viral e-mail showing Obama sternly pointing, as if in mid-lecture, at a crowd.
Above the photo, it read (in the PG form): “Everyone Chill the Bleep Out.” And below: “I Got This.”
Of course he was cool. But what was surprising — certainly for all beleaguered politicians — was how undefensive he was. He had this.
Obama wanted to let the voters know that they were right. He wasn’t going after those who watch Sean Hannity or, for that matter, those who watch the mildly disturbed Chris “I Forgot Obama Was Black” Matthews. This was a direct pitch to disaffected independents, those unsure of where to tune in.
Obama had come to office thinking he could be bipartisan. That was until he figured out voters didn’t really like either party.
He took a friendly shot at Republicans in the audience, wondering why they hadn’t applauded when he talked about the taxes he had lowered — and a not-so-friendly shot at a policy of obstructionism. But he took a tougher shot at Senate Democrats, basically accusing them of not having had the courage of their convictions, or of any other kind.
He even took on the Supreme Court for its money-is-speech, corporations-are-people ruling on campaign finance. When Justice Sam Alito mouthed that Obama’s charge was “not true,” that must have been the visual Obama was hoping for.
When Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu — whose “Louisiana Purchase” became shorthand for political horse-trading — hit Obama on Thursday for not being specific enough on health care reform, that was more than Obama could have hoped for.
The biggest deficit facing government is, as Obama pointed out, a trust deficit. Democrats aren’t losing elections because people suddenly remembered they like Republicans. You can read polls any way you want, but most people want health care reform. They just don’t trust the government to deliver it — either the care or the reform. Watching the unashamed Senate deal-making on health care widened the trust gap.
It’s the gap that Obama was attacking. When Obama had said he and Scott Brown were elected for the same reasons, that is what he meant: Voters were looking for someone to trust. As it happens, Obama remains the politician best positioned to make that happen.
The Republican strategy of just saying no to Obama seemed risky when he was riding those high poll numbers. But Obama looked at the 60 votes in the Senate and the big Democratic majority in the House and thought that’s where the game was.
“I never thought the mere fact of my election would usher in peace, harmony and some postpartisan era,” Obama said a year later.
But I’m guessing he did think that. Now, he knows better. And so he gave a 70-minute speech to make sure that everyone else got it, too.
Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.
