The biggest surprise in tonight's State of the Union address were the laugh lines -- the self-deprecating jokes in the speech, and the ad-libs that President Obama sprinkled throughout. He poked fun at Republicans, the bank bailouts, the Senate's slow pace.
"The president needed to come out not defensive but fired up, and that's what he did," progressive Rep. Donna Edwards told me in the Capitol after the speech. "He was showing the pathway to the future."
This attitude in the face of recent political setbacks is appropriate when Democrats feel demoralized and Republicans seem ascendant, however far from the power they may be. By the end of the night, it seemed that members of Congress were so enthused that their leadership should have called the chambers into session and passed a few bills right there.
Junot Diaz wrote recently that the president hasn't couched his agenda in a narrative. I'll be interested to hear what Diaz makes of the speech, but the narrative I heard Obama reaching for was simple: When times are tough, Americans overcome their problems. Casting the last decade as a time of troubles, the president asked Americans -- and Congress in particular -- not to be afraid of big solutions: "Again, we must answer history's call." The ability to do so, he suggests, is embedded in the American character.
One somewhat unusual note in this theme was his comparisons of our economic efforts to those of China, Germany, and India. Obama even prompted "We're No. 1!" chants from a coterie of Democratic representatives in the back of the chamber when he announced a goal of new economic leadership, and in particular to double American exports in the next five years.
There are nonetheless many people who are disappointed in Obama's efforts, and the president was graceful in acknowledging that change has not come fast enough before pivoting to his message: Now is the time to rebuild the institutions that once made up the repository of American trust -- its government, its media, and, yes, its corporations -- as previous generations did (a theme he touched on in his last address to Congress on health-care reform).
The speech clearly lifted the spirits of Democrats in the audience, and judging from what I've heard thus far, around the country. Whether that will be enough to get his policy agenda moving forward remains to be seen.
-- Tim Fernholz
