Thoughts on the State of the Union

Two days ago I was invited to participate in a panel of citizens who represent different parts of the political spectrum and who had all agreed to watch President Obama’s State of the Union address and discuss it on the PRI program, To the Point.

So I made sure I could tune in my local PBS station and sat down with my kids to watch the President deliver the last State of the Union address of his first term.

I was impressed with President Obama’s strategic decision to touch on themes that would likely play well to moderate or independent voters – ending the war in Iraq, preserving the middle class dream of owning a home or sending your kids to college, and above all, a call to businesses to bring jobs back from overseas to a country that still suffers from having too many people out of work.

I was also pleased that the President was willing to assume a more adversarial stance towards Congress, which has played Russian roulette with the debt ceiling and still threatens to let unemployment benefits and an extension of the payroll tax reduction expire out of what can only be described as an act of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

But I have to admit I was a little taken aback when I found that the first question I was asked on To the Point concerned the Republican response and not the State of the Union speech itself. Fortunately, I’d listened to most of that too, so I could point out that that Governor Daniels’ assertion that “One in five men of prime working age, and nearly half of all persons under 30, did not go to work today” was misleading at best.

What I really wanted to ask was why Governor Daniels was focused primarily on how many men are unemployed when women make up over half of the US labor force. Is the female unemployment rate unimportant to the GOP? But I was already representing the Democratic point of view on the program, and to throw in “feminist” as well might unnecessarily rile the other two panel members, who were both male and Republican so I decided not to press the point.

But here I can say explicitly that while I suspect that Governor Daniels’ examples were purposely selected to make the unemployment situation look as bad as possible, it also strikes me that the focus on men here is symptomatic of the GOP’s blind spot when it comes to working women, just as the Republican leadership foolishly persists in describing the increasing economic gulf between rich and poor as “class warfare,” when even a majority of Republican voters thinks that those making over $1 million should pay a greater percentage of their income in taxes.

That is the main reason I believe President Obama has an advantage going into the current election cycle. Americans are no longer buying the “politics of envy” rhetoric any longer, especially when it comes out of the mouths of millionaire candidates like Mitt Romney. Of course, Mitt Romney can claim that paying a 15% tax rate is perfectly legal, and that he shouldn’t pay more than he owes. But he embodies the very inequity of the tax system and has said nothing about what he would actually do to address this inequity. In fact, both Romney and Gingrich bridle at the suggestion that millionaires contribute the same percentage of their income to the treasury as middle class Americans, who are paying 25% if they make more than $35,000 as a single filer and more than $47,000 as a head of household.

President Obama also sent an inspiring message when he mentioned the military as an emblem of what can be accomplished when every person is focused on a common purpose.

Those of us who've been sent here to serve can learn a thing or two from the service of our troops. When you put on that uniform, it doesn't matter if you're black or white; Asian or Latino; Native American; conservative, liberal; rich, poor; gay, straight. When you're marching into battle, you look out for the person next to you, or the mission fails.

Certainly, as an institution, Congress is about as far from the military as you can get. It’s meant to be a place where people represent different points of view and argue for different solutions to our nation’s problems. But the increasingly divisive, tit for tat, petty partisan politics that has dominated Congress during the past year has rightly disgusted voters on both the left and the right.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Landmark civil rights legislation, the Clean Air and Water Acts, and even welfare reform under President Clinton were all undertaken with cooperation between the two parties and with a sense of the common good.

Statesmanship in the best sense of the word is all but extinct in today’s Congress, and in an election year, there seems little chance of its resurrection, but by advocating moderate policies in clear, unvarnished terms, President took the first steps towards a reasonable and thoughtful way for both parties to respond to the nation’s most pressing need.

Hubert Humphrey said that the “essence of statesmanship is not a rigid adherence to the past, but a prudent and probing concern for the future.” It’s time for our representatives to stop lobbing bombs at one another and show just this kind of consideration for the future of the country rather than wasting another year in an unprofitable and potentially dangerous stalemate.