Posted by
Bill Crawford on Saturday, January 29, 2011 8:08:45 PM
I missed the live version, but I saw enough replays to last a couple of news cycles. I've come to enjoy gandering over the darned thing from the text version- I started that with George W., whose speechifying was often pedantic.
Anyhow, the anticipation for this speech was big from the left. It was supposed to be the path for Obama turning everything around, and getting America to tell the tea party to cram it. My first reaction was, well, not much.
I mean, it would have been news if he turned a corner with something like "the era of big government is over". Well, nothing like that happened. He danced along for a while before getting to the level of government spending, and then his verbal concessions were followed by more "investments". States are pondering bankruptcy because the feds are drying up their stimulus money, and he is talking about expanding high speed rail! I can't think of a better way to announce that you are still a Keynesian.
He is a realist, to some extent. he knew that his defense of public employees had to start with the teachers, where one will find the highest level of bipartisan support. The trouble is, the best teachers can expect in the next couple of years is to minimize layoffs. Here, like in many parts of the country, teachers are underpaid, especially at the entry level. In suburban NY and California, the drain their salaries and pensions put on the public is unsustainable, but other public employees will get axed first, because of the children factor.
I don't understand the "Sputnik moment" thing, save to say that he reads Friedman in the Times a lot.
I can guess at the semi-worshipful reaction by his base. They pretty much got the political crap beaten out of them over the last two years, and it probably was refreshing to have somebody preaching to their choir. The efforts to pose the reaction of Bachmann, Ryan and Palin as unworthy of public utterance was part of the same movement. It has become an indicator of political legitimacy as a conservative to have your opponents present you as someone not qualified for public conversation.
That is old hat now. Unfortunately, so was Obama's speech. Nothing new. Oh, well.