I listened to about half of President Obama's state of the union address earlier this week. It mostly seemed just to be political fluff as usual. A lot of hollow but puffed up rhetoric full of sweet sounding promises with little substance, a lot like cotton candy. Looks good, tastes good, does not fill you up or supply nutrients and in the end rots your teeth.
There was one thing though, that the president said, that I just cannot get out of my head. I just keep thinking of him saying it and I think of it over and over again. The reason I keep thinking of it is because he seemingly announced that the United States of America has a new form of government now (because of the elections last November) that the new year has begun. I have listened to the news reviews of his speech, I have looked to the blogs and read about the address on several of them, and have seen little mention of him announcing our new form of government.
WHAT IS THE PROBLEM PEOPLE, ARE YOU ASLEEP? DON'T YOU REALIZE HE JUST SAID WE HAVE A NEW FORM OF GOVERNMENT HERE! AREN'T YOU CONCERNED?
Oh, wait a minute, what am I yelling about - of course you know that we have always had this type of government. I just again thought of the quote in question. What he was actually talking about was probably only a new form of government that was worthy of note in his own mind. I mean, after all, our form of government has been a republic for over 200 years and in all that time, at least for the majority of it, we have in essence had a 2 party political system governing us. So, I suppose when the president said: "...governing will now be a shared responsibility between parties..." he was only admitting his own ignorance and or his arrogance in that he had apparently believed it had not been that way during the first 2 years of his term (heck maybe he thought it was always run in some way other way - more like a an oligarchy or more like a dictatorship).
Did everyone miss that quote or just ignore it? Am I making a mountain out of a mole hill? I don't think that said statement was inconsequential nor that it was not extremely telling on the part of the president. He was (and probably remains), in my opinion, the most smug president in my lifetime. One of the reasons for his continued arrogance must certainly have been the fact that not only was he elected to the office under a seeming shroud of secrecy about his past but that he had a Congress, in both houses, made up of mostly democrats, ultra liberal ones at that. It is not so any longer - is it! So is it that he now needs to make it appear as if he is bowing down a bit to the legislature of our own nation, or at least to the opposing political party. Was it not so much to say sorry for America as he did when he bowed to leaders of other nations, but to say sorry for his own bad behavior in his first 2 years in office? No of course not, but probably trying to make everyone believe he is now willing to work with the opposing political party certainly helps him when he is trying to hoodwink the American people into believing that he is a swell sort of a guy who is worthy of reelection in 2012. The thing is though, he was, as is apparent by this statement, not willing to work with the other party while his party was in control. I mean, why did he never say before now that governing was a shared responsibility? Of course it was not due to ignorance, he could not be that stupid being a natural born U.S. Citizen and a community organizer and all - so it must have been due to arrogance or so I would think. Despite any talk to the opposite, he obviously never wanted to work with Republicans during the first two years of his administration, as far as I can tell. That is evident to me by this statement and by almost every piece of legislation he tried to get through Congress and by the smug attitude he had while doing so. The only thing surprising about any of this is that he would, in essence, admit as much by making this statement. Can you actually believe he said it, that he thinks our government's responsibility will NOW be a shared one between parties! Amazing however you look at it.
What next - will he realize that the American people have rights under the Constitution or that he should try to keep our nation's foreign policy strong or maybe that he should actually cut back on government spending or stop borrowing from China? Anything he says seems to me to be all so much lip service from a man who seemingly believed that before his state of the Union address, and the November elections, government was not a shared responsibility between parties!
If you have not realized it, allow me to clarify, the above is my personal opinion.
All the best,
Glenn B
2 comments:
Where does he say this in his speech? I can't find it
The words I quoted are in the 8th paragraph, by my count, of his address. I count each break separated by a line of open space as a paragraph, so there are 1 or 2one liners. See these links, the last of which is an official government site (and is the one I used to count the paragraphs), the quotation can be found at all three of these sites:
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/26/133224933/transcript-obamas-state-of-union-address
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/State_of_the_Union/state-of-the-union-2011-full-transcript/story?id=12759395
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/25/remarks-president-barack-obama-state-union-address
Just go to any of the above web addresses to view the transcript. If you still do not see it, hit the edit button on your browser, select 'Find on Page' and type in the quotation. It will go right to it. Remember it is the 2011 State of the Union Address.
All the best,
GB
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