Michael C. Moynihan: The Sorry State of Our Union
[Michael C. Moynihan is a senior editor of Reason magazine.]
State of the Union speeches generate much buzz amongst the Washington press corps, most of whom won’t remember its contents in three months, and little from the American public, most of whom understand that politicians excel at reading empty, contradictory, and frequently baffling promises from a teleprompter. All of this talk about our bright future, our glorious past, and our terrifying present, is leavened with treacly human interest stories describing ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things; it’s the political equivalent of the NBC Olympic broadcast.
But for Democratic presidents, the State of the Union serves another very specific purpose: to further alienate the perennially alienated left wing of the party by expressing fealty—with a number of important and incoherent caveats—to the free market.
For instance, here is President Jimmy Carter in 1978, addressing the problem of stagflation: "[W]e know that in our free society, private business is still the best source of new jobs." And if those Yippies and Vietcongniks didn't quite follow him, Carter continued: "We need patience and good will, but we really need to realize that there is a limit to the role and the function of government." Years later, reflecting on the economic mess of the late 1970s, Carter blasted his fellow big government Democrats, complaining that "all they knew about [economics] was stimulus and Great Society programs." Sound familiar?...
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State of the Union speeches generate much buzz amongst the Washington press corps, most of whom won’t remember its contents in three months, and little from the American public, most of whom understand that politicians excel at reading empty, contradictory, and frequently baffling promises from a teleprompter. All of this talk about our bright future, our glorious past, and our terrifying present, is leavened with treacly human interest stories describing ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things; it’s the political equivalent of the NBC Olympic broadcast.
But for Democratic presidents, the State of the Union serves another very specific purpose: to further alienate the perennially alienated left wing of the party by expressing fealty—with a number of important and incoherent caveats—to the free market.
For instance, here is President Jimmy Carter in 1978, addressing the problem of stagflation: "[W]e know that in our free society, private business is still the best source of new jobs." And if those Yippies and Vietcongniks didn't quite follow him, Carter continued: "We need patience and good will, but we really need to realize that there is a limit to the role and the function of government." Years later, reflecting on the economic mess of the late 1970s, Carter blasted his fellow big government Democrats, complaining that "all they knew about [economics] was stimulus and Great Society programs." Sound familiar?...