High Marks for Obama’s Speech
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on January 26th, 2011 5:38 am by HL
High Marks for Obama’s Speech
A CBS News poll found 91% of those who watched President Obama’s State of the Union speech approved of the proposals he put forth during his remarks. Only nine percent disapproved.
A CNN/Opinion Research survey indicated that 52% of speech watchers had a very positive reaction, with 32% saying they had a somewhat positive response and 15% with a negative response.
Reactions to the State of the Union Address
Mark Halperin: “The president’s speech made a down payment on the two biggest political challenges he faces in 2011 and 2012, including his own re-election. First, he delivered one of the strongest efforts yet at explaining his rhetorical theory of the case for how his policies will create jobs in America. And, second, he laid even more of a trap for Republicans, whose challenge to cut spending without damaging valuable programs or raising taxes grows more difficult by the day (and the president knows it).”
Jonathan Chait: “The substance of Obama’s speech was moderate liberalism — we like business, but government has a role too, neither too much nor too little, etc. It’s hard to attach that kind of case-by-case pragmatism to an overarching theme. But I do think Obama pulled it off pretty well. He took a fairly hackneyed idea — the future — and managed to weave it into issue after issue, from infrastructure to energy to deficits to education and even foreign policy.”
Matt Yglesias: “I thought it was a good speech; an example of trying to govern from the White House. I would say that zero percent of the speech was dedicated to building support in congress for concrete pieces of legislation that the President hopes to sign into law. And it’s too bad that the president’s not in a position to promise to shepherd big bills through congress. But the reality is that he’s not. So he’s wisely floating above the fray, issuing “sounds good but hard to do in practice” calls for smart infrastructure investments, tax reform, less oil subsidies, etc. Most likely none of it will happen. But it will definitely sound good, and if the president’s lucky some of it will happen!”
Does Obama’s Budget Math Add Up?
The AP has done a fact-check on key points that President Obama made during his State of the Union address Tuesday night.
“Obama spoke ambitiously of putting money into roads, research, education, efficient cars, high-speed rail and other initiatives in his State of the Union speech. He pointed to the transportation and construction projects of the last two years and proposed ‘we redouble these efforts.’ He coupled this with a call to ‘freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years.’
“But Obama offered far more examples of where he would spend than where he would cut, and some of the areas he identified for savings are not certain to yield much if anything.”
