State of the Union

First, to mention the VERY BIG DEAL for all the pre-State of the Union talking heads commentary: yes, people from different parties managed to sit next to each other for almost an hour and a half. Don't worry: everything turned out fine. And by that I mean absolutely nothing was different.  Forgive me for not really thinking that this lovely, heart-warming, entirely symbolic gesture will put any dent in the poisonous partisan vitriol that characterizes the 112th Congress. The president said as much in his speech, when he noted in his call for civility that "What comes of this moment will be determined not by whether we can sit together tonight, but whether we can work together tomorrow." Stay hopeful, sir...

I guess that's his job though. The State of the Union Address necessitates that the president pull out his Motivator-in-Chief mantle and assure the American people that the State of our Union is indeed strong. But thankfully, that's only one aspect of the SOTU; it's also a chance for him to lay out in broad terms what his administration's policy objectives are for the next year. President Obama talked about five key topics: innovation, education, infrastructure, deficits, and security.  Innovation also acted as a sort of meta-topic to tie the other four together. This resulted in the truly unfortunate catchphrase that America must "win the future," the wording of which seems to imply that the future is a contest, one you can only 'win' at the expense of the other players. What a terrible attitude! I really hope this phrase doesn't catch on...

Main Points in Each Topic
Innovation: Spark creativity, encourage private investment in R&D, submit a budget with its investment priorities in order re. education/ environmental policy/innovation, target goals for future renewable energy use. The only really interesting part of this was Obama's mention of paying for renewable energy research through eliminating oil subsidies. If that actually happens I might have to reevaluate my levels of political cynicism...

Education: responsibility lies first with the family, can't just pour money at problem, institution of "Race to the Top" program, goal of again having highest proportion of college grads in world. I'm glad he took the opportunity to talk up the DREAM Act again, even if not by name.

Infrastructure: Put more Americans to work through increased infrastructure spending (much of it private?), ask congress to simplify corporate tax code, reduce barriers to growth through removal of unnecessary government regulations.

Deficits: Freeze annual domestic discretionary spending, note that repealing health care law would increase deficit, restate necessity of repealing millionaire tax cuts. His big promise here was to develop a proposal to reorganize (ie shrink) the executive branch bureaucracy. On a purely selfish level, this proposal sounds like one more thing that will make it even more difficult for a soon-to-graduate poli sci student to find a job, so i don't know how in favor of it I am...  Oh, and he also promised to veto any bill with earmarks? That statement confuses me. it sounds totally unenforceable. What is his definition of earmark?

Security: START and DADT passed, More troops are out of Iraq, some unspecified level of troops will start leaving Afghanistan next year, fighting corruption, growing democracy, blah blah. Nothing new here.

Merely by virtue of the medium, the main Presidential Theory of Power at work here is 'going public.' And one thing Obama has always been able to use very effectively is his ability to speak convincingly to the American people. Now, whether that will actually translate into people being better, more attentive parents, just because Obama said so...I'm not so sure. But his arguments promoting the DREAM Act and the importance of renewable energy might actually end up resonating with the American people.

The only two concrete examples of the president using his formal, enumerated powers were his veto threat and his promise to cut unnecessary regulations. Everything else was really just a suggestion to Congress-
the President may be able to submit a budget or proposal, but the House and Senate get to do whatever they want with it afterwards.

Overall, I wouldn't call this one of Obama's 'wow' speeches, but I don't think the State of the Union is supposed to be. It's by necessity broad and far-sweeping, but that also makes it vague and not especially helpful/informative. So I guess I support the objectives, but I'm holding out for the specifics; I'm looking for a little bit more than the statement that "we do big things."

~Michele

PS: if anyone would like a thorough rebuttal to the Republican Response, these guys have a good one:
http://politicalcorrection.org/factcheck/201101250020

sources:
State of the Union- Full Text. ABC News. January 25, 2011.
http://www.ktnv.com/story/13895661/text-of-the-presidents-2011-state-of-the-union-address?clienttype=printable

BONUS POST

Um, so I thought you guys might like to know that as I was browsing the google for some good presidential art, I came across an ENTIRE CACHE of images sharing the "naked Obama with a unicorn" motif. There are some things safesearch just can't protect you from...

So here they are, repeated for your viewing (dis)pleasure.

Journal Entry 1

Guys, I'm actually pretty fond of our constitution the way it is. It's comfy, it's familiar, there's plenty of wiggle room, and most of the stupidest bits have already been dealt with through the amendments process. And the parts that I don't like generally either have to do with Congress (anti-gerrymandering amendment please!), or I think they'd be best dealt with through the legislative process instead (i.e. marriage rights for LGBT people.)

The two key constitutional changes I would make to the American Presidency both deal with the way a president is elected rather than with his powers once he gets into office. (Probably because that's the only part I feel qualified to opine on, honestly. But still.) The first and most obvious is the abolition of the electoral college. Maybe it made sense in a time when the population was poorly educated, news could take weeks to travel, and vote-counting was all done by hand, but now its a totally anachronistic system that should have gone out the window when we started popularly electing Senators. Of all the countries that have used our Constitution as a model for their own, none has chosen to emulate the ridiculously oblique, convoluted method we use to divine our next President. Would the average American even be able to explain how the electoral college works? Probably not. Should they have to? No, because it's stupid!

Why, you ask? Oh, my readers, the problems surrounding the mess that is the electoral college are vast and multifaceted. Here are just a few of them:

1.Having a system where someone could gain the popular vote and still lose the election just seems so inherently anti-American. No matter what their political affiliation, the idea of a President that wasn't popularly elected is just utterly at odds with the collective notion of what's right. Shouldn't an incoming President have the support of the majority of the nation? Or else who in the world is he representing?

2.The electoral college gives unfair weight to smaller states. Under this system, not all votes are created equal. Yes, the number of electoral votes states receive are divided sorta kinda on population numbers, but look at this comparison*:

Wyoming: population- 544,270  electoral votes- 3

California: population- 36,961,664 electoral votes- 55

One Wyoming vote: 5.512 e^-6  One California vote: 1.488 e^-6

This means the vote of someone in Wyoming counts over three times as much as the vote of someone in California. wtf electoral college? What kind of game are you playing? Are the states as entities electing a president then?  Why does that make the people of Wyoming as an entity over three times as important as the people of California?? So many questions, so little logic!

3. Then to make things even more frustrating, since the vast majority of states have a winner-take-all system for distributing electoral college votes, many people's votes end up not counting for anything at all. And in states that reliably swing one way or another, it can be a major depressant to voter turnout. Why bother, if you know which way your state is going to go anyway? Switching to a direct election could have nothing but a positive effect on voter turnout levels.

4. In modern-day practice in most states, electors are (according to convention) all supposed to vote the way a majority of the people in their state vote, right? So at some level we already accept the notion of a popular vote. There's really no point in keeping all these unnecessary, cumbersome steps in between.

Sadly, since you need 3/4ths of states to ratify an amendment for it to pass in real life, and small states benefit from this so disproportionately, I don't see the electoral college going away any time soon.

Hmm. I have no idea how long these journals are supposed to be, but I have the feeling that this one is definitely crossing the line into WAY too annoyingly long, so I'll try and make the second point more brief: Campaigns have become prohibitively dependent on a never-ending, ever-increasig quest for funds.

It puts the emphasis of an election in entirely the wrong place. Rather than being focused on the relative merits, platforms, and visions of the candidates, it becomes a question of cold hard cash and who has more of it. According to Politico, the 2008 presidential elections alone cost over a BILLION dollars.** Cause, you know, it's not like there's anything more useful we could have done with that kind of money... (ooh, hey. What if all the money candidates raised above a certain amount had to go to something useful? Like paying down the national debt, or funding poor schools, or investing in clean technology R&D? Completely unworkable, but whatev.)

Anyway. The hunt for campaign contributions has an unhealthy and corrosive effect on American politics, especially in light of the recent Citizens United ruling. I want a candidate to win because they're legitimately the best choice, not because they made the most promises to big businesses or hosted the most $3,000 a plate dinners. That's why I'm in favor of publicly financed elections. I mean, I know we already have a weak, optional version of publicly financed elections, but I want something much stricter. Something that puts caps on the total amount that candidates can spend, and that companies / unions / non-profits can spend on their behalf. Something that demolishes the unsound notion that equates "money" with "speech". I'm not going to try and write the exact language for it, but our Constitution could definitely do with some strict limits on campaign spending.

To close, a couple things worth pondering more:

• The line-item veto, and whether we're more helped or harmed by granting the president that kind of broad additional authority.
• The enactment of some sort of presidential "Question Time," the way the British Parliament does it. I'm way jealous that British people get to have Question Time and we don't. It's so much cooler than the State of the Union.
• The concept of executive privilege makes me really squeamy, but I don't know how I would go about changing it. I know there are somethings that need to be kept secret, but it's just so easily abused. This one's not explicitly in the constitution, but if I'm remembering right it falls under a whole 'separation of powers' deal. 

*numbers all according to US Census Bureau, 2009.
**http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15283.html

Guys look how cool i am. i have a BLOG.

Hey fellow group mates! I don't know about you all, but this is my first entry into the blagosphere, so i'm not really used to forcing other people to care about my opinions via the internet yet. Can't be too hard though, right? You guys are pretty much a captive audience anyway.

Well, um, looking forward to meeting you and such. :]   (except you, Andrew.)

Cordially,
michele

PS I promise I'll put an actual title on this thing soon. Good titles are such elusive things...