Gil Troy
Mr. Troy is Professor of History at McGill University, and the author, most recently, of
The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short Introduction, (OUP) and
Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents: George Washington to Barack Obama . His other books include: Hillary Rodham Clinton: Polarizing First Lady and Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s. He is a member of the advisory board of HNN. His website is giltroy.com. His next book “Moynihan’s Moment: America’s Fight against Zionism as Racism” will be published this fall by Oxford University Press.
The State of the Union Address is Woodrow Wilson’s gift to future presidents. President Thomas Jefferson submitted the annual update the Constitution mandated in writing, deeming presidential appearances before Congress too monarchical. In December 1913, after his first year in office, Wilson decided to address a joint session of Congress directly. Ninety-six-years and a little more than one month later, Barack Obama took full advantage of President Wilson’s gift, appearing crisp and commanding after weeks when even the so-far-embarrassingly-pliant Washington press corps was starting to doubt Obama’s allure.
The mathematics of the State of the Union enhance the dramatics. There stands the Commander in Chief – nowadays the Celebrity in Chief, too – flanked by his Vice President and the Speaker of the House. Things in Washington have become so staged that, this year, when Vice President Joseph Biden’s purple tie matched Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s purple outfit observers wondered if their staffers coordinated their clothing. Everyone else crowded into the House of Representatives chamber is also reduced to a prop. Cabinet members, Supreme Court Justices, Generals of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 100 Senators, and 435 Representatives, sit in the well. America’s legislators end up looking ridiculous not just diminished, as the members of the President’s party bob up and down giving their leader repeated standing ovations and loud “Huzzahs!” while their rivals alternate between clapping begrudgingly and sitting in stony silence. The President wafts over the chaos, doling out his pearls of wisdom, as the people’s representatives act like schoolkids engaged in locker-room antics.
These days, the magic of television magnifies the speech’s power. The first State of the Union speech was broadcast on radio in 1923, and on television in 1947, benefitting Harry Truman as he began planning a 1948 campaign few thought he would win. Televising the speech further trivializes America’s political elite because the President speaks past them to the real audience, the American people.
Obama started strong. His presence, his fluidity, his characteristic calm and charm, reminded Americans why they elected him. Rather than trying to play cute with the usual formulation – some variation at the beginning of “the state of our union is strong” – he acknowledged the economic “devastation” and Americans’ “anxieties.” Evoking the Civil War and World War II, the Great Depression and the Civil Rights Movement, he reminded Americans that, when tested before, they “answer[ed] history’s call.”
Obama quickly plunged into a much-needed defense of the bank bailout and his stimulus plan. In his most human moment, he acknowledged that Democrats and Republicans united in hating the bailout: “I hated it. You hated it. It was about as popular as a root canal.” His stimulus defense appeared more substantive as he detailed the bill’s accomplishments. But to avoid being too professorial, Obama failed to connect the dots, not quite explaining how that controversial bill actually created the jobs he enumerated.
On health care, Obama struck the right balance between being resolute and contrite. For a “Mr. Spock” type far more similar to George W. Bush in refusing to be self-critical than to the perpetually-apologetic Bill Clinton, Obama said: “I take my share of the blame for not explaining it [the health care reform] more clearly to the American people.” As usual, Obama was better at restating the need for reform than justifying his particular prescription, but he used the power of the podium brilliantly in challenging the opposition, saying: “if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.” An uncomfortable silence reigned among the chastened Republicans, who seemed to shrink more.
Perhaps the night’s most poignant moment came when America’s political messiah of 2008 confessed his mortality in 2010. “I campaigned on the promise of change…,” the Yes-we-can man said, “[b]ut remember this - I never suggested that change would be easy, or that I can do it alone. Democracy in a nation of three hundred million people can be noisy and messy and complicated.” The President was half-right. Change is hard; but his campaign certainly implied it would be easy, which was part of its charm then, and explains the inevitable disappointment now.
Obama finished with a pep talk for partisans combined with the storyline he hopes will hold the independents. “We have finished a difficult year. We have come through a difficult decade,” he said, once again bashing Bush. “But a new year has come. A new decade stretches before us. We don't quit. I don't quit,” he roared, flashing the partisan steel he honed in Chicago’s political wards. “Let's seize this moment -- to start anew, to carry the dream forward, and to strengthen our union once more.”
For all the optics, one strong State of the Union address is not enough to redeem a presidency – it is too much of a “gimme,” too much of a set up, to change history. But the 2010 State of the Union showed that the obituaries pronouncing Obama’s political demise were premature. And his acknowledgment that “change” would not be easy was a rare understatement.
The people of Massachusetts handed President Barack Obama a stinging political rebuke on his first anniversary in office. The descent from “Yes we can” to “No we won't” was dizzying. Mr. Obama won the Bay State last year by more than 25 percentage points in his triumphal march to his historic inauguration. A year later, Republican Scott Brown won the special Massachusetts Senate election by five points to replace the late Ted Kennedy. The message is clear: Voters, especially independent ones, believe Mr. Obama's presidency is on the wrong track.
To avoid derailment, President Obama must learn from Candidate Obama to transcend partisanship. He must reread his analysis in The Audacity of Hope that America has moved beyond 1960s-style Big Government liberalism, even as it realized it must move beyond 1980s-style Reaganism, too. In short, Mr. Obama must renew his vow to lead from the centre.
Although the Democratic candidate, Martha Coakley, ran a Keystone Kops campaign in Massachusetts, Mr. Obama should take her defeat personally, especially after campaigning for her on Sunday. Mr. Brown boldly made the election a referendum on Mr. Obama's leadership and Mr. Obama's health-care reform. Cries of “41” at Mr. Brown's victory party celebrated his new power as the 41st Republican senator, preventing the Democrats from blocking a Republican filibuster that could bury health care or any other major reform.
Campaign signs calling Mr. Brown “the people's candidate” captured his campaign's populism, immortalizing his greatest moment. Moderating a debate between the candidates, CNN's David Gergen asked Mr. Brown about the irony that, by sitting “in Teddy Kennedy's seat,” he might sink Mr. Kennedy's long-sought health-care reform for another 15 years. Mr. Brown's reply was one of those great political sound bites: “Well, with all due respect, it's not the Kennedys' seat, and it's not the Democrats' seat, it's the people's seat.”
Mr. Obama's big drop in Massachusetts is among independent voters – paralleling a nationwide collapse. To win them back, he must disprove the growing impression that he is a 1960s-style “tax and spend” liberal, wildly expanding the budget deficit by responding to every major problem with a big government solution. More broadly, he must liberate his presidency from the death grip of congressional Democrats.
Polls show Mr. Obama made two huge mistakes with Obamacare. First, by focusing on health-care reform before the economy revived, he seemed to be exploiting the crisis to force change, believing, as his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has said, that “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Second, by deputizing Congress to draft the legislation, Mr. Obama ended up with a bill that appeared fiscally irresponsible, excessive, clunky and perverted by the kind of legislative logrolling – meaning legalized bribery – that characterizes Congress at work. Instead of hovering above the fray like the philosopher-king most Americans thought they were electing, Mr. Obama got mired in Washington's political muck, smelling like every other political hack.
Mr. Obama should learn from the great Democratic Party phoenix, Bill Clinton, who understood how to find redemption by playing to the centre, repeatedly. But, even more important, Mr. Obama must become what he once was, a human dream catcher, weaving a redemptive, inclusive narrative that wowed Americans – and the world – with a message of hope, a politics of healing, an instinct for outreach and the gift of fine phrase.
Mr. Obama first caught Americans' attention with his 2004 keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, preaching a modern multicultural gospel of mutuality and idealism at the heart of American nationalism. None of that poetry was apparent when Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson secured promises of complete federal funding forever for his state's expanded Medicaid payments, while other states would only enjoy three years of full funding. Mr. Obama should reread his Audacity of Hope with its many homilies about forging consensus, crossing the aisle and governing with a spirit of bipartisanship. And he must revive the national sense of idealism and optimism with which so many Americans greeted his election.
True, Mr. Obama ended up governing amid economic distress. And true, the prose of governing is never as uplifting as the poetry of politicking. But the crisis facing America and the tone Mr. Obama set on his way into office should have reinforced a push to the centre rather than to the left.
Traditionally, U.S. presidents have found salvation in the centre – George Washington evoked America's common cause, Abraham Lincoln sang a new song of American nationalism, and Franklin Roosevelt passed one of America's most radical reforms, Social Security, with a strong bipartisan majority. To revive his presidency – and to pass a realistic health-care reform bill – Mr. Obama should remember this American tradition and solve today's crisis by being as moderate as other past presidents, thus reminding all Americans of their common commitment to a peaceful, prosperous and just future.
Gil Troy is professor of history at McGill University and a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. He is the author of Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents.
The people of Massachusetts handed President Barack Obama a stinging political rebuke on his first anniversary in office. The descent from “Yes we can” to “No we won't” was dizzying. Mr. Obama won the Bay State last year by more than 25 percentage points in his triumphal march to his historic inauguration. A year later, Republican Scott Brown won the special Massachusetts Senate election by five points to replace the late Ted Kennedy. The message is clear: Voters, especially independent ones, believe Mr. Obama's presidency is on the wrong track.
To avoid derailment, President Obama must learn from Candidate Obama to transcend partisanship. He must reread his analysis in The Audacity of Hope that America has moved beyond 1960s-style Big Government liberalism, even as it realized it must move beyond 1980s-style Reaganism, too. In short, Mr. Obama must renew his vow to lead from the centre.
Although the Democratic candidate, Martha Coakley, ran a Keystone Kops campaign in Massachusetts, Mr. Obama should take her defeat personally, especially after campaigning for her on Sunday. Mr. Brown boldly made the election a referendum on Mr. Obama's leadership and Mr. Obama's health-care reform. Cries of “41” at Mr. Brown's victory party celebrated his new power as the 41st Republican senator, preventing the Democrats from blocking a Republican filibuster that could bury health care or any other major reform.
Campaign signs calling Mr. Brown “the people's candidate” captured his campaign's populism, immortalizing his greatest moment. Moderating a debate between the candidates, CNN's David Gergen asked Mr. Brown about the irony that, by sitting “in Teddy Kennedy's seat,” he might sink Mr. Kennedy's long-sought health-care reform for another 15 years. Mr. Brown's reply was one of those great political sound bites: “Well, with all due respect, it's not the Kennedys' seat, and it's not the Democrats' seat, it's the people's seat.”
Mr. Obama's big drop in Massachusetts is among independent voters – paralleling a nationwide collapse. To win them back, he must disprove the growing impression that he is a 1960s-style “tax and spend” liberal, wildly expanding the budget deficit by responding to every major problem with a big government solution. More broadly, he must liberate his presidency from the death grip of congressional Democrats.
Polls show Mr. Obama made two huge mistakes with Obamacare. First, by focusing on health-care reform before the economy revived, he seemed to be exploiting the crisis to force change, believing, as his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has said, that “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Second, by deputizing Congress to draft the legislation, Mr. Obama ended up with a bill that appeared fiscally irresponsible, excessive, clunky and perverted by the kind of legislative logrolling – meaning legalized bribery – that characterizes Congress at work. Instead of hovering above the fray like the philosopher-king most Americans thought they were electing, Mr. Obama got mired in Washington's political muck, smelling like every other political hack.
Mr. Obama should learn from the great Democratic Party phoenix, Bill Clinton, who understood how to find redemption by playing to the centre, repeatedly. But, even more important, Mr. Obama must become what he once was, a human dream catcher, weaving a redemptive, inclusive narrative that wowed Americans – and the world – with a message of hope, a politics of healing, an instinct for outreach and the gift of fine phrase.
Mr. Obama first caught Americans' attention with his 2004 keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, preaching a modern multicultural gospel of mutuality and idealism at the heart of American nationalism. None of that poetry was apparent when Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson secured promises of complete federal funding forever for his state's expanded Medicaid payments, while other states would only enjoy three years of full funding. Mr. Obama should reread his Audacity of Hope with its many homilies about forging consensus, crossing the aisle and governing with a spirit of bipartisanship. And he must revive the national sense of idealism and optimism with which so many Americans greeted his election.
True, Mr. Obama ended up governing amid economic distress. And true, the prose of governing is never as uplifting as the poetry of politicking. But the crisis facing America and the tone Mr. Obama set on his way into office should have reinforced a push to the centre rather than to the left.
Traditionally, U.S. presidents have found salvation in the centre – George Washington evoked America's common cause, Abraham Lincoln sang a new song of American nationalism, and Franklin Roosevelt passed one of America's most radical reforms, Social Security, with a strong bipartisan majority. To revive his presidency – and to pass a realistic health-care reform bill – Mr. Obama should remember this American tradition and solve today's crisis by being as moderate as other past presidents, thus reminding all Americans of their common commitment to a peaceful, prosperous and just future.
Gil Troy is professor of history at McGill University and a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. He is the author of Leading from the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents.
