While that idea has some appeal, there is neither anything that says that the members of Congress have to attend the SOTU. Care to take a wild guess how many of them would follow an invitation like that? Or how many of the President’s own party?
I’m putting in for Jan 13th as a vacation day … the insanity afterwards will be so worth watching. Will Luther, the Anger Translator, be there?
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First, any President in his last year is not much more than a seat-warmer. Do you remember any President who accomplished a lot in his last year in office?
And yes, granted, health care reform was a major accomplishment, even though it is far from perfect. And yes, the President did come around on SSM in the end. And there is the Ledbetter act. And other successes.
But I am willing to take the bait and respond in a specific way. Just a few things.
- To start with a fairly small item: how about enforcing federal law and collecting the grazing fees instead of letting Cliven Bundy get away with using federal land at his will.
- How about being involved in his own health care bill instead of letting the Congress do the work.
- How about EITHER not drawing a red line in Syria OR actually acting on it once it has been crossed.
- How about some involvement in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
- We are still waiting (mostly) for the executive action on immigration.
- How about campaigning for Democrats in the midterms.
- How about investigating some of the Bush era war criminals instead of taking that off the table.
- How about going after some Wall Street criminals in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis.
- How about giving pardons to some people in jail (instead of handing out the lowest number of ANY President since Zachary Taylor!) (not counting Garfield, who hardly had a chance to pardon people).
- How about regular and close contact to the Dem leadership from the hill, or, for that matter, with the Rep leadership as well.
- How about getting your hands dirty in politics every once in a while instead of being the aloof intellectual statesman.
- How about taking a lead on climate change, and I mean Copenhagen, not just finally in Paris.
- How about leading instead of leading from behind? Which, btw, is a nice line from G&S “Gondoliers”, and it is not a compliment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZSnHb26A3k
In most of those cases I am not sure that Presidential involvement would really have carried the day. Perhaps it could have made a difference, perhaps not. But we will never know, bc Obama never even tried. That should be enough for the moment, although I could go on. You’re welcome.
PS: before the “hostile Congress” meme starts again, Presidents like Truman, Johnson or Clinton had hostile majorities in Congress as well. Yet, somehow, the CRA and the VRA got passed. After a LOT of personal involvement by President Johnson. If he had left the task to Mansfield and McCormack (remember them? No? The top Dems of the Senate and House at that time) he would have accomplished about as much as Obama did.
‘White Press’ is pretty inflammatory and wide reaching. If you mean Teabag press like Fox, please say so.
There is a good segment of the press … I happen to watch MSNBC (after Mo Joke is done) and there is a whole lot of respect and support for the temperament of our Prez.
I am white and I only defer to Chammy in my love and adoration of our president and his family.
I’m not saying you were going beyond the right wing press, just clarifying.
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Bullshit. No other President in our lifetime has had to deal with the kind of congress Obama has.
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Nontraditional, huh? I hope he raps the whole thing. Boy, would that blow a few gaskets in that island of traditional, white male power.
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I was late to the party and didn’t see your comment before I posted that I want Luther there!
If that is your only criticism of my list, I can certainly live with it. Just out of curiosity: how closely have you studied the legislative maneuvering which went into the CRA? And the amount of Presidential leadership which was necessary to get a majority in this case?
Your desire to puke is now noted.
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Yeah, all of that is true. But mostly the SOTU is a vast PR opportunity for the President. Even the opposition has to be polite, and if they are not (“you lie!”) it will harm them. So, I seriously doubt that future Presidents will not take that chance to lay out their program to the country with a lot of pomp and circumstance.
Well that was the low hanging fruit, and was most obviously wrong to me.
Not much at all frankly, so you are obviously more informed than I, but what that has to do with “before you bring up the hostile congress meme” I’m not sure. All legislation is hard work and deal making.
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That’s gonna leave a mark.
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Hmmmm…I guess we are seeing entirely different people.
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Hugo, it’s called the “Green Lantern” theory of the Presidency. That one man can make change happen through sheer force of will.
Bundy? Do you think harsh words would have done the trick? Perhaps a scolding? That whole situation had “Waco” written all over it in big, bold letters.
Israel-Palestine? When the Israeli Prime Minister is even more to the right than this Congress?
Pardons? How about tens of thousands of early releases for prisoners whose sentences were deemed too harsh?
Regular and close contact with Republican leadership? Don’t you remember how John Boehner had to sneak into the White House so that his own caucus wouldn’t grab the torches and pitchforks?
President Obama isn’t perfect - not by a long shot - but he has done an incredible amount of good for this country, and he’s already left an amazing record of accomplishments for history to discuss.
And all without a single scandal since the day he took office.
Like Andrew Sullivan once said, if a Republican President had done half the things this President has done, they’d have him on Mount Rushmore by now.
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Nor does the Constitution say when …only “from time to time”.
LBJ had a hostile congress? I remember at the time the dems having majorities in both houses. I am not sure hostile is the correct term anyway, since the opposition at the time had a passing interest in governing and were willing to compromise to get things done.
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Truman was President in a time when politicians mostly acted like adults. Same for Johnson. We did not have a bunch of loons like the Tea Party as a majority in Congress – people who have zero interest in government and prove it every day. Meanwhile they yap about how much they love the Constitution which I doubt most of them have actually read and comprehended. Certainly not the “religious test” for office part.
Clinton did have a hostile faction in Congress led by back-bencher, Newt Gingrich. Newt came out of Georgia where I lived for a couple of decades. We already knew that he was good at manipulating people with outrageous lies and exaggerations and fantasy. Clinton was a lot smarter than Newt and the American people saw through the little loud-mouth flamethrower.
The Congresses during Clinton’s presidency were not as hopeless a do-nothing collection of politicians as the Tea-Party infected Congresses during Obama’s presidencies. Those people should have their salaries docked for doing nothing whatsoever to improve the lives of the average tax-payer and, in point of fact, working to make the lives of the not-rich worse.
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damn, sorry to repeat your post, did not see it until now.
I for one am really gonna miss Obama and his skill and intelligence. He’s an impressive man.
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Things were a whole lot crummier when Obama took office, thanks to the 8 years of incompetence and lying of the previous administration. If nothing else, Obama has restored dignity and respect to the office of the Presidency here and abroad. But he also managed to pull us out of a deep, deep recession thanks to the Democratic majority in Congress.
After 2010 however, getting the things done that would have boosted the economy like putting money into infrastructure repair and building new infrastructure like high speed trains was impossible to achieve thanks to the Republican idiots who carry on constantly about the “Debt.” Republicans still cling to Laffer’s economics because the rich do well in that scenario.
When we had a surplus thanks to Clinton, the R’s immediately blew that away on two unfunded wars, lowering taxes for the suffering rich, etc. And then the R’s have the crust to say that Obama did nothing for the economy.
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