Obama ’s State of the Union Address: Cynicism, clichés and a call for aus terity

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Obama’s State of the Union Address: Cynicism, clichés and a call for
austerity
By Barry Grey
28 January 2010

Over many decades, the annual State of the Union Address, nominally
the occasion for the president to give an accounting to the American
people, has acquired an entirely ritualistic character. The joint
session of Congress to which the speech is delivered is scripted in
every detail. The event has long since become a calculated exercise in
cynicism and deceit.

President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union speech, delivered
Wednesday night, was no different. The main aim of this address was to
find a rhetorical bridge between the packaging of Obama as the
candidate of “change” and “hope,” and the reality of his presidency,
which has been unswervingly devoted to the defense of privilege.

The political and moral character of both the speech and the speaker
was summed up in the fact that the catastrophe in Haiti, which has
cost 200,000 lives and counting, did not merit a mention until one
hour and five minutes into the address. Even then, the monumental
tragedy was cited only as an occasion for gratuitous
self-congratulation and yet one more invocation of the “American spirit.”

More than one year after an economic disaster that has ravaged the
lives of millions of Americans and hundreds of millions of people
around the world, no explanation was offered, only clichés. These
included the now standard wrist-slaps of “irresponsible” bankers, who
are never named and never called to account.

It was as if the bonanza for Wall Street and disaster for workers of
the past year was the result of an accident or cosmic forces, and not
the outcome of conscious policies set into motion for the sole purpose
of protecting the personal wealth of a handful of multi-millionaires
and billionaires. “If there is one thing that has unified Democrats
and Republicans,” Obama declared, “it’s that we all hated the bank
bailout.”

Amidst the banalities and lies, the contradictions in the speech were
glaring. The president who called Wednesday for “reforms” to rein in
the bankers has stuffed his administration with Wall Street insiders.

The speech featured endless invocations of the “American people” from
the representative of a political system that has excluded the people
from any participation in the political life of the country or any say
in the policies of the government.

For the most part, the petty measures to aid the “middle class” listed
in the speech were put there to serve as sound-bites. Obama and
everyone else in the chamber knew they had little chance of being enacted.

Obama made no attempt to explain why his previous proposals—above all,
his plan to slash health benefits for millions of people in the guise
of health care “reform”—had aroused mass opposition.

The speech was replete with pleas for bipartisanship. Even within the
framework of bourgeois politics, Obama’s deference to the Republican
right was extraordinary. Less than 15 months after the electorate
decisively repudiated the party of George Bush and handed the
Democrats the White House and large majorities in the House and
Senate, Obama did not dare denounce the minority party for seeking to
block every one of his initiatives.

The greatest lie of all was the pretense that Obama and the assembled
congressmen and Washington dignitaries had any connection to the broad
masses of the American people. Obama indulged repeatedly in the
inevitable, sickening device of naming towns—Elkhardt, Indiana;
Allentown, Pennsylvania—that have been devastated by the policies of
successive administrations, including his own, to show how deeply he
identified with the common people.

All the time, seated behind him were Vice President Joseph Biden, his
bejeweled watch flashing when the camera lights hit it, and Speaker of
the House Nancy Pelosi, wearing one of her designer suits and her
omnipresent string of pearls and sporting her perfectly coifed hairdo.

The substantive policies that Obama advanced represented a
continuation and deepening of his right-wing agenda. In the name of
creating jobs and improving the lot of the people, Obama called for a
three-year freeze on social spending, while ruling out any reduction
in the gargantuan budgets for war and “homeland security.”

This is a mere down payment for the more serious task of gutting core
social programs—Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. To begin that
job, Obama announced the establishment of a bipartisan commission to
propose spending cuts and taxes on consumption.

To show that he had gotten the message sent by voters in
Massachusetts, who handed the Democrats a humiliating defeat in this
month’s special Senate election, Obama declared that “jobs must be our
number one focus in 2010.” This was immediately followed by the line
that got the most enthusiastic response from his audience: “Now, the
true engine of job creation in this country will always be America’s
businesses.”

Obama proceeded to outline a series of tax cuts and windfalls for
business that comprise the bulk of his so-called jobs program—$30
billion for community banks, tax credits for small businesses that
hire new workers, the elimination of capital gains taxes on small
business investment, tax incentives for companies that invest in new
plants and equipment.

The enthusiasm in the chamber swelled when Obama added to this list
special incentives for the nuclear power, coal and biofuels industries
and waivers for offshore drilling by the oil giants.

The enthusiasm waned when he said he would not extend Bush’s tax cuts
for those earning more than $250,000 a year, which includes virtually
all of the politicians and officials who were present.

Under conditions where over 15 million workers are officially
unemployed—3.9 million more than when Obama took office—where nearly
one in five are underemployed, and homelessness, hunger and poverty
are rapidly rising, Obama did not propose using a penny of government
funds to actually hire a worker.

On foreign policy, Obama touted his escalation of the war in
Afghanistan, hinted at retaliation against Washington’s trade rivals,
and issued threats against Iran and North Korea.

On full display was the utter contempt for the intelligence of the
American people felt by Obama and the entire political establishment,
as if somehow the implications of their policies and the realities of
American society can be evaded by means of rhetorical tricks.

No amount of lies or hokum can alter the fact that the candidate of
“change” is discredited in the eyes of the American people. The lesson
that must be drawn is that nothing will change until the masses of
working people intervene independently in the political life of the
country, in opposition to Obama and both parties of big business and
on the basis of a socialist and revolutionary program.

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/stou-j28.shtml

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