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This previous Wednesday, Barack Obama spoke to a national audience during his State of the Union Address. It was another lackluster performance. There didn’t seem to be any common theme or agenda. After analyzing how President Obama has failed to accomplish much as commander-in-chief, I have come to the realization that it his strengths and not supposed weaknesses that have actually weighed down his performance as president.
Barack Obama is a great orator and has an expert command of language. But Obama, for all of his eloquence, is an emotionally charged man. At a time when Americans are emotionally charged themselves, his persona does not placate Americans’ fears.
At one point during the State of the Union, President Obama focused on reforming the shady practices of insurance companies against the American people. Good or bad, the diatribe was extremely general and didn’t get too specific with details. On an issue so complex and important in our society, specificity, statistics, examples –– heck –– even an anecdote or two would have given credence to this passage. Without a pause or segue, Mr. Obama afterward changed the subject. In this transition, Mr. Obama got very personal as he congratulated his wife Michelle on a national obesity project for children that she herself is spearheading.
From this sequence of events during last week’s speech, I have come to the belief that Obama is a free spirited individual whose messages are many and themes are sporadically personal. To write a Pulitzer Prize in literature, this persona can certainly help an individual accomplish such an endeavor. To lead the American public as the chief executive of the United States during economically insecure times, Obama’s ideology and character are ill suited.
Barack Obama’s emotional actions and extemporaneousness quickly lead to comparisons to the sweater wearing and peanut planting Jimmy Carter of the early 1980s. Carter made a lot of public appearances and did many quirky things in an attempt to raise the public’s awareness of America’s over-dependence on foreign oil. Obama is doing the same thing for issues affecting 2010 America, making speeches about grandiose “initiatives” –– of course according to “national security protocol” and also with “great long term effects for our country’s middle class ––” that will ultimately lead to “jobs, jobs, and more jobs.” One does not have to be a subscriber to YouTube’s “Barely Political” video channel to realize how banal and played out has become the concept of increasing jobs as a result of federal government action.
The 2008 election did not give the country too many candidates with whom Americans can count on to unify the U.S. and concomitantly lead America in a new time of mass globalization.
I thought two Americans, two New York politicians in particular, Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton, were best suited to occupy the presidency following the 2008 economic recession.
Americans, however, seemed to have been swayed by Obama's strong rhetoric and believed that he had the intelligence and courage to change American policies for the better. Most importantly, the country during election season believed he could change policies for the majority of people.
On the night of Nov. 4, 2009, it seemed as if many, from all areas on the political spectrum, were excited to have Obama in their corner of the ring. Larry Kudlow, the rightist Wall Street veteran who sports a Gordon Gekko look with slicked back hair, believed that Obama’s toughness and boldness could be a boon for big business in America as well as for the “little guy on Main Street.” Kudlow believed that Obama’s academic pedigree and “political chops” could bring intellect and creativity to a government that has not seen those qualities in the 19th or 20th centuries.
Conversation ensued after Kudlow’s comments and the rest on the panel were quick to laud Obama’s pugilism and gall as characteristics of a president who could attack the imperial and overly complex American health care system. Judging by Wednesday night’s speech, the word “audacity” positively connoted with the 44th President seems only fitting for the man’s New York Time’s best selling novel, “The Audacity of Hope.”
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