In his last State of the Union address, President Obama took shots at Republican presidential candidates, expressed one of his "few regrets," and said he's "as confident as I have ever been that the state of our union is strong." (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)
THE MORNING PLUM:
Barack Obama first rose to national prominence with a speech at the 2004 Democratic convention that proclaimed that there is one America: “there isn’t liberal and conservative America; there is the United States of America.” President Obama’s final State of the Union Speech last night was suffused with an optimistic faith that this could still prove to be the case — but it was also loaded down with numerous tacit admissions that, for now at least, it might not be the case at all, that he may have been wrong about this all along.
Obama had two main goals in last night’s speech. The first was to speak to the nation as a whole about the future he thinks we should be working towards as a country. The second was to set the terms of the argument for the 2016 presidential election on grounds favorable to electing a Democratic successor, both to preserve his legacy and to keep the nation on the path to that future.
To understand the speech’s effort to accomplish that latter political goal, look at two things from this morning: First, a new national poll showing that 65 percent of Americans think things in this country “have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track.” And second, a new report in the Washington Post detailing that the leading GOP presidential candidates, in particular Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, believe that the way to win the White House is to appeal to working class whites who feel left behind by the recovery and betrayed by the nation’s political institutions.
Obama made a spirited effort to argue that the nation is not on the “wrong track” at all — international diplomacy on climate and with Iran is yielding results; more people are gaining health coverage and security; unemployment is down; and the recovery is revealing the durability and resilience of the American economy. As Obama put it: “Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.” At the same time, though, Obama also acknowledged that many Americans may not be feeling this — he noted that globalization and technological change are producing widespread economic disruption, while arguing that the rules of the market need to be fundamentally rewritten to more fairly distribute the fruits of the recovery and to mitigate the pain that economic disruption is causing.
Meanwhile, Obama also sought to rebut the broad arguments that Trump — and, to a lesser extent, Cruz — are making to voters who remain disillusioned with their economic prospects and the failure of government to address them. And so, Obama argued extensively that Trump’s demagoguery towards Muslims and immigrants is antithetical to our values and — equally important — will work against our interests, in terms of prosecuting the war on terror and taking full advantage of the value of immigrants to our country. In short, Obama made the case for an inclusive cultural vision, while arguing that government can and should still play a central role in ensuring a minimum level of economic security and in promoting progress towards shared prosperity. In a nod towards people’s disillusionment with government’s ability to do that, he reiterated the oft-made argument that big money distorts the political process and that broader political participation can help force government to more effectively promote people’s interests.
However, Obama’s own words indicated that he has come to understand that a large chunk of the country fundamentally disagrees with his definition of progress and with his vision of government’s role in promoting it — and that his efforts at persuasion have not been enough to overcome these differences. A big chunk of the country does not envision as robust a governmental role in promoting economic security and maintaining a minimum standard of health care; in acting to combat climate change; and in creating a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants to get right with the law.
That’s the America that Trump and Cruz are speaking to most effectively right now — the chunk of the country that remains hostile, or at least deeply skeptical, towards Obama’s vision of cultural inclusion, towards what counts as progress, and towards government’s proper role in promoting it. In pleading for all of these things — and in admitting that he’s failed to unite the country behind a shared vision — Obama implicitly conceded that when it comes to our biggest arguments, there still may be two Americas, after all. The unspoken truth that Obama could not openly acknowledge last night is that Democrats are betting their hopes for preserving this vision on the demographic gamble that their America is inexorably evolving into the larger one.