State of the Campaign

And there you have it, everybody! Barack Obama's opening salvo in the battle to retain his job.

The State of the Union address has once again proven its usefulness not as a genuine, penetrating look at the true condition of the country, but as a mega-platform for rolling out agenda items and uttering platitudes. The 2012 State of the Union address was the same as its predecessors, except this one had more than its fair share (pun intended) of the campaign appeal, considering the election year we find ourselves in. It is an unhealthy political concept that so many presidents spend the last year of their first terms MIA from their job, in order to campaign for that same job.

Putting the smaller contention aside for the moment that no president should have two consecutive terms for precisely this reason, I have one much bigger issue to bring to my reader's attention. The issue was more than made plain by the Obama's before the speech even started. That issue was the guest sitting next to Mrs. Obama in the audience, the one and only secretary to Mr. Warren Buffett. This was the same secretary that was upheld as a symbol of economic "unfairness" because of the difference in tax rates between her and her employer. The presence of that secretary made it clear that not only was Obama uninterested in the honesty of his presentation, but that he was also unconcerned about a sense of seriousness in his speech. In the end, nothing he proposed in the speech was serious. And very little was honest.

It seemed that every accomplishment the president put forth to bolster his record had a corresponding glaring caveat. He spoke of the growing number of jobs, but failed to mention that many of these were temporary, only pushing through the busy retail seasons and not counting the jobs lost concurrently in other areas. He spoke of a falling unemployment rate, only to fail again to mention that many working people have simply stopped looking for work and are no longer counted. He expounded on the promise of and his support for clean energy jobs, and remained silent on the fact that those clean energy companies are failing not for lack of money but for lack of a competitive product.

His lack of seriousness concerning his record is truly breathtaking, not so much for what he did say as for what he left out. But more breathtaking is the blatant dishonesty of many of his accusations.

He cast banks and lending companies as the villains and the American people as the victims of the 2008 financial crisis, whereas in reality the public has been told by their own government that mortgaged housing is their right, not something to work toward responsibly. The government also shares the blame for its soft mandate to lending companies to loosen credit to those with bad financial records.

This is only one example of his dishonesty. It is evident also where he speaks of the health care overhaul as merely reforming a private sector business. Wrong. The overhaul specifically mandates that the government not only expand its own medical programs to cover some people, but also subsidize low income Americans' medical plans to ensure low cost.

Obama essentially accomplished three things with the speech. The first thing is that he lavishly portrayed himself as the hero of the working class, the savior of the nation, the messiah to a broken country and a broken system. He would have our nation "built to last," (again, failing to explain how the nation has survived for almost two hundred and fifty years without him.)

The second thing is that he permanently pitted himself against the Congress in an unsubtle effort to diminish its check on his power. There are a startling number of solutions he proposes that he plainly states he will accomplish by presidential fiat, as well as smirking about his end run around Congress concerning recess appointments. This is a man clearly interested in a kind of vaguely limited dictatorial power where a "do-nothing Congress" will simply be bypassed whenever it collides with his wishes.

And the third thing the speech accomplished is it gives even more evidence of Obama's unwavering belief that the government is more entitled to a citizen's work and his possessions than the citizen himself is. Obama cannot give up on the idea of a country that guarantees outcomes, rather than the mere opportunity to attempt an outcome. Every solution he proposed comes from government, as if the government actually is the one that creates jobs. To invert a famous saying of Ronald Reagan, Obama sincerely believes that we are a government that happens to have a people, not a people with a government.

Every proposal he put forward in the speech was a new tax burden to pay for yet another federal agency. He spoke about cutting budgets and streamlining departments, but the total effect would be minuscule compared to the enormity of the money problem the government faces. As I contended earlier, the man is not serious.

In the end, it boils down to this: President Obama wants to raise taxes, consolidate his own power, direct and regulate the economy according to his own whims, play the market with taxpayer money, and most importantly of all, get reelected.

As a campaign appeal it was pretty blatant. And, I hope, mixed with some desperation. I would like the president to know one thing above all else, and that is this: someone else might actually be better at the job than he is. He refused to speak of the true nature of the economy last night, because the truth is actually quite bad. I find it hard to be convinced that we have turned a corner, when I am still seeing people being laid off left and right around me and as I watch the unrelenting surge in the price of every consumer good.

Don't yank us around anymore, Mr. Obama. You, in fact, are the problem, not the solution. I don't know who I am voting for come this November, but it will most certainly not be you. When the only solutions you can think of are more of the same bad policies and attitudes, you loudly proclaim yourself a failure.