As many have observed, this year’s State of the Union address surprisingly scanted both foreign affairs and “climate change”. The former is one of any President’s principal responsibilities, and it’s not as if the rest of the world were currently in repose; the latter was among this President’s signature issues. Recall that on the day he clinched the nomination, the oceans were supposed to stop rising.
Omitting Global Warming from the speech was particularly strange in view of the enthusiastic endorsement of carbon-free energy and high-speed rail lines. The only arguable justification for those economically deleterious projects is their possibly beneficial impact on future temperatures. Otherwise, they’re as wasteful as building greenhouses in Alaska to free the locals from their dependence on Lower 48 agriculture.
These silences are the opposite of pregnant. They are barren silences, the one suggesting that the President has chosen to be irrelevant to the turmoil around the globe, the other that his call for new “investments” has no coherent rationale. Why has this widely praised orator lost his voice?
The simplest answer is that the Obama Administration has, in just two years, reached the state of exhaustion that typically overtakes Presidents in their sixth or seventh year. The office drains its holder’s energy; his ablest and most enthusiastic lieutenants depart; friction steadily slows the gears of government; morale fades as bright dreams vanish into the political mists. Speaking last night, Barack Obama looked twenty years older than a year ago. It was fitting that many of his themes were plagiarized recycled from his predecessors. His big slogan, “Win the Future”, was borrowed from – of all sources! – Newt Gingrich, while “Sputnik moment” was stale – in fact, had lapsed into irony – before young Barack was old enough to vote. Then there’s the unattributed paraphrase of – worse than Gingrich! – Richard Nixon. BHO: “We will move forward together, or not at all.” RMN: “To go forward at all is to go forward together.”
The secondhand rhetoric can be blamed on speech writers, but a vigorous President attracts writers who can put fresh prose into his mouth. It’s near the end of the line that hacks take over.
There is, however, an alternative explanations that would relieve Mr. Obama of the burden of premature senility.
It may be that neither he nor his writers could craft an account of the Administration’s foreign policy that wouldn’t be self-discrediting. In the preceding week, after all, negotiations between Israel and Palestine reached the point of visible collapse (having effectively collapsed long ago), Iran laughed off the latest pleas to restrain, or even talk about restraining, its nuclear program, Hezbollah took control of the government in Lebanon, Red China insulted America at a state dinner, and the State Department found itself tongue-tied about the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. Maybe the U.S. looked like it was floundering because the flounders really are in charge, and no one could figure out a way to portray them as smart barracudas.
As for “climate change”, perhaps somebody in the inner circle pays enough attention to public opinion to realize that the alarmist clichés of yesteryear have lost their force and appeal. Better no rationale at all for anti-carbon initiatives than one that will draw sarcastic chuckles from living rooms around the country.
Given these unwelcome realities, the President could have decided to withdraw from the debate. That doesn’t mean that he won’t pursue his foreign and environmental agendas, only that he won’t bother to defend them. That would be a risky strategy for the leader of a democracy, but it’s not necessarily doomed to failure. The President needs only a modicum of Congressional and popular support to act abroad, and his administrative discretion at home, though not unfettered, is vast, especially in matters involving the environment, where the courts have already struck down most of the barriers to overreaching regulation.
Barack Obama is nothing if not self-confident. It’s easy to imagine him plowing forward without concern for public indignation. He can do a great deal unilaterally. Will he destroy his reelection chances in the process? Maybe, but (i) he may not care, (ii) he may not believe that mere mortals can defeat him, and (iii) there’s no certainty that a fractious Republican Party will put up a stronger candidate in 2012 than it did in 2008.
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