Don’t tell anyone I told you, but I heard a rumor that the White House ordered 100 bottles of Cristal after the South Carolina GOP primary results came in. The chance that Obama could face Newt Gingrich in the general election, or a Mitt Romney so weakened that he can barely drag himself to the podium for a debate beat-down has Barack and Michelle fist-bumping and doing the Dougie all night.
The weakened state of the Republican field lowers the bar for what President Obama has to deliver in his State of the Union address tomorrow night, but it doesn’t have to. He can take the opportunity to deliver a substantive argument about his policies and plans, rather than a boiler-plate political stump speech. Unfortunately, I don’t believe that he will.
For over a year now Obama has been the wayward ex begging to get back into our collective voting-pants in order to keep his job this fall. In fact, I’ve been calling his re-election campaign the Obama 2012 Re-Seduction Tour as he desperately tries to remind his supporters of all the good times you used to have and how he’s been so busy and is totally sorry about that indefinite detention bill, selling out your momma ,and running up your credit card bill. Didn’t you realize that there was a hidden campaign message when he was singing “Let’s Stay Together” last Friday? Tomorrow night, Obama delivers the last State of the Union address of his first term, and I suspect it will be more wooing, flowers and promises, but if he really wanted to rock the base he’d come a little harder.
Barack Obama’s State of the Union address should be a rundown of every single accomplishment in his first term. A straight up call and response to the Democrats in the audience on Healthcare, Jobs saved, Jobs created, financial and environmental regulations. And for every accomplishment he lists he needs to say that the GOP voted NO. Every time. No more of his usual mealy-mouthed complaints that the GOP doesn’t want to act like grown-ups.
America has had the Dad-In-Chief for months now. They want the president to pull off his glasses, run into a phone booth and remind them of why he ran to begin with.
More importantly Obama needs to totally ditch any and all pretense about bi-partisanship. It has not worked, the Republicans don’t want it to work and the Democrats don’t understand that “BI” actually means both sides participate instead of one side capitulating and then complaining about it. The president needs to give his own version of the “Either you’re with us or you’re against us” speech to the GOP and say that he’s going to go his own way rather than follow a path of co-operation that honestly neither side is truly interested in committing to.
Of course, Obama won’t do any of the above. He’ll give a speech with flowers and candy, take the voters back to their townhouses and they’ll all wake up tomorrow morning hoping that he’ll call. President Obama is good at those kinds of speeches. I just don’t believe that is what America truly needs right now.
This article originally appeared online at Politic365.com.