The State of the Union: High Marks for Style and Substance

I intend to write this week on (1)the SOTU; (2) wasting crises; (3) health care; (4) the Court Decision and Justice Alito — at least now we know he isn’t a complete solipsist; and (5) Colombia. I was traveling to Colombia during the speech and could not write immediately on the State of the Union.

So to begin there, I thought the speech was a “10″ on style and tone; and an “8″ on substance. On style and tone there are moments when the man is Roger Federer, he is poetry and zen. He struck the perfect attitude throughout. He delicately reset his first term without a lot of angst, and there were several moments when, if you love the pure game of politics, all you could do was admire his touch. The wonderful grin when he looked over at the Republican side and told them that he thought they would at least applaud on the tax cuts (they didn’t, but then had to); the way he passed through the ritualistic required statement that “the state of the Union is good” at warp speed; his direct comments on the Supreme Court’s money in politics decision; his clear and skillful demotion of the status of health care as the core of the Administration — these aren’t things speech writers just write, actually saying them, pulling them off, under the pressure of those moments is very hard. I’ll return to tone and style.

The substance was presented better than at any other point in his presidency. There was nothing exceptional about it, but he chose the right issues and above all, he focused. As I have said over and over, the problem with this year has been the Administration’s failure to demonstrate any clear strategy of governing and therefore its decision apparently to choose a non-strategy, to do everything. This time he focused almost completely on the economy and on jobs. To be honest about it, there isn’t much a President can do at this point in an economic cycle — he certainly cannot improve the unemployment rate in the short run. But the President’s proposals were sensible, won’t do any harm and may do some good. The real point is focus. New Presidents and White Houses are always arrogant, always believing that unlike any other presidency they can do 29 impossible things before breakfast. They all waste a lot of their and everyone else’s time learning they cannot. So the Administration now has a clear focus; and it is the right focus. What they now need is to put this focus into the context of a strategy for governing. What do they mean by the focus; how are they going to accomplish it; how to they enlist the American people; and how do they engage the Republicans?

Back to style and tone. If the President’s tone in the State of the Union speech had been the prevailing style throughout last year — calm, warm, modest, funny — he would be up 10 points in the polls. In my view an underlying current of anger — which seems to be the style progressives are being taught these days — is terrible politics; and in any case President Obama can’t pull that off. But the style in this speech was hugely attractive; and his follow-on in the Q&A with the Republicans a day later was pitch perfect. If I were in the White House, I would be trying to find ways to take advantage of the President’s enormous abilities in this direction: more give and take with the media; and maybe even stealing McCain’s idea of a periodic question and answer period with the Congress.

As a bottom line, the speech had to be good enough to allow the President to shift the topic and change what the political consultants call “the narrative” — I have never been sure what that meant. This speech was way better than that.