The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Obama’s Clintonian SOTU

Posted on | January 25, 2010 | 18 Comments

In 2000, I won a $40 newsroom pool at The Washington Times by making the best prediction of the length of Bill Clinton’s State of the Union Address. (Hint: With Clinton, always bet longer.)

For a decade, from the late Clinton era and continuing through the Bush years, my job on SOTU nights was to edit the transcript of the speech down to about a half-page of excerpts — 60 column inches, roughly 2,200 words — trying to capture the key points.

What unholy drudgery it was! White House speechwriters specialize in humorless tedium puffed up by historic ambition. Inevitably, the president begins with several paragraphs of soaring Churchillian oratory (challenge and mission and duty and so forth) strewn with warm anecdotes about what are called Skutniks — ordinary citizen whose stories symbolize the points the president wishes to emphasize. And then comes the Laundry List of specific policy proposals.

Clinton’s Laundry Lists were especially wretched because, once the Republicans took over Congress in 1995, there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that any of what the president proposed would ever be enacted.

Rather than scale back his ambitions, however, this situation caused Clinton to become absurdly grandiose. He’d start rattling off his Laundry List, crammed with completely zany stuff: Tax credits for this and subsidies for that, and on and on until you half-expected him to conclude by guaranteeing that every 15-year-old boy in America would get to second base by the end of sophomore year.

Most of what Clinton actually did propose in the Laundry List portion of his later State of the Union address was micro-initiatives — small-potatoes policies and programs intended to appeal to one or another constituency group: Suburban soccer moms, senior citizens, farmers, etc. These were merely rhetorical gestures, intended to signify how much Clinton felt your pain. It didn’t really matter whether the proposals were enacted. Merely by proposing this stuff, Clinton showed he cared. And now we see Obama going the same dismal and dishonest route:

President Obama will propose in his State of the Union address a package of modest initiatives intended to help middle-class families, including tax credits for child care, caps on some student loan payments and a requirement that companies let workers save automatically for retirement . . .

Yadda, yadda, yadda. Small potatoes, the sure sign of an administration that has lost whatever momentum it had a year ago, when Hope and Change looked like an irresistible political tsunami. And some poor schmuck is going to be saddled with the job of editing that transcript tonight. Glad it’s not me.

Category: Barack Obama

Comments

18 Responses to “Obama’s Clintonian SOTU”

  1. Rose
    January 25th, 2010 @ 9:52 pm

    What I noticed with Clinton’s SOTU addresses was a distinct move towards the nanny state – about quitting smoking and censor-chips for your TV – away from big issues and national defense kinds of things. A focus on minutiae and not on the bog picture.

    How depressing.

    When Gore/Lieberman were running, saw the same crap – they took a pretty interesting character, Lieberman, and had him prattling on about the same Nanny State, control of your lives down to the last detail issues. It never sat exactly right on Lieberman’s shoulders. Sad.

    I’ll try to watch Obama, but honestly, I hate the sound of his voice, the lies and spin couched in every nuanced phrase, and the incessant looking to the right and to the left. Maybe I’ll read those transcripts instead. But I am betting it’s warmed over campaign crap, with an emphasis on the Nanny State issues.

    He’s a “community organizer’ – code word for “activist,” nothing more – and all the rest is above his pay grade. Activists love the Nanny State.

  2. Rose
    January 25th, 2010 @ 9:52 pm

    What I noticed with Clinton’s SOTU addresses was a distinct move towards the nanny state – about quitting smoking and censor-chips for your TV – away from big issues and national defense kinds of things. A focus on minutiae and not on the bog picture.

    How depressing.

    When Gore/Lieberman were running, saw the same crap – they took a pretty interesting character, Lieberman, and had him prattling on about the same Nanny State, control of your lives down to the last detail issues. It never sat exactly right on Lieberman’s shoulders. Sad.

    I’ll try to watch Obama, but honestly, I hate the sound of his voice, the lies and spin couched in every nuanced phrase, and the incessant looking to the right and to the left. Maybe I’ll read those transcripts instead. But I am betting it’s warmed over campaign crap, with an emphasis on the Nanny State issues.

    He’s a “community organizer’ – code word for “activist,” nothing more – and all the rest is above his pay grade. Activists love the Nanny State.

  3. Rose
    January 25th, 2010 @ 4:52 pm

    What I noticed with Clinton’s SOTU addresses was a distinct move towards the nanny state – about quitting smoking and censor-chips for your TV – away from big issues and national defense kinds of things. A focus on minutiae and not on the bog picture.

    How depressing.

    When Gore/Lieberman were running, saw the same crap – they took a pretty interesting character, Lieberman, and had him prattling on about the same Nanny State, control of your lives down to the last detail issues. It never sat exactly right on Lieberman’s shoulders. Sad.

    I’ll try to watch Obama, but honestly, I hate the sound of his voice, the lies and spin couched in every nuanced phrase, and the incessant looking to the right and to the left. Maybe I’ll read those transcripts instead. But I am betting it’s warmed over campaign crap, with an emphasis on the Nanny State issues.

    He’s a “community organizer’ – code word for “activist,” nothing more – and all the rest is above his pay grade. Activists love the Nanny State.

  4. Rose
    January 25th, 2010 @ 9:53 pm

    errrr BIG picture. dang typos

  5. Rose
    January 25th, 2010 @ 9:53 pm

    errrr BIG picture. dang typos

  6. Rose
    January 25th, 2010 @ 4:53 pm

    errrr BIG picture. dang typos

  7. Roxeanne de Luca
    January 25th, 2010 @ 10:44 pm

    Will he mention that reductions in “some” student loan payments will either mean slightly higher taxes (or reduced services) or everyone else, or, if the university is forced to subsidise some of this reduction, higher tuition for everyone else?

  8. Roxeanne de Luca
    January 25th, 2010 @ 10:44 pm

    Will he mention that reductions in “some” student loan payments will either mean slightly higher taxes (or reduced services) or everyone else, or, if the university is forced to subsidise some of this reduction, higher tuition for everyone else?

  9. Roxeanne de Luca
    January 25th, 2010 @ 5:44 pm

    Will he mention that reductions in “some” student loan payments will either mean slightly higher taxes (or reduced services) or everyone else, or, if the university is forced to subsidise some of this reduction, higher tuition for everyone else?

  10. Miss Sharon
    January 26th, 2010 @ 1:26 am

    “guaranteeing that every 15-year-old boy in America would get to second base by the end of sophomore year”~~Heh. Very Clintonian.

    I think I will pass on this STFU speech. He is rather pathetic and at the same time maddening to listen to or watch. But I recommend he keep he keep doing the same, expecting a different result, and soon enough we will have a completely decompensated paranoid on our hands. The emotional leaks and tone are quite telling.

    Will you be live blogging? Now that could be fun!

  11. Miss Sharon
    January 26th, 2010 @ 1:26 am

    “guaranteeing that every 15-year-old boy in America would get to second base by the end of sophomore year”~~Heh. Very Clintonian.

    I think I will pass on this STFU speech. He is rather pathetic and at the same time maddening to listen to or watch. But I recommend he keep he keep doing the same, expecting a different result, and soon enough we will have a completely decompensated paranoid on our hands. The emotional leaks and tone are quite telling.

    Will you be live blogging? Now that could be fun!

  12. Miss Sharon
    January 25th, 2010 @ 8:26 pm

    “guaranteeing that every 15-year-old boy in America would get to second base by the end of sophomore year”~~Heh. Very Clintonian.

    I think I will pass on this STFU speech. He is rather pathetic and at the same time maddening to listen to or watch. But I recommend he keep he keep doing the same, expecting a different result, and soon enough we will have a completely decompensated paranoid on our hands. The emotional leaks and tone are quite telling.

    Will you be live blogging? Now that could be fun!

  13. Rose
    January 26th, 2010 @ 3:33 am

    I’d tune in for that.

  14. Rose
    January 26th, 2010 @ 3:33 am

    I’d tune in for that.

  15. Rose
    January 25th, 2010 @ 10:33 pm

    I’d tune in for that.

  16. Rose
    January 28th, 2010 @ 7:25 pm

    Curious how you thought it compared.

  17. Rose
    January 28th, 2010 @ 7:25 pm

    Curious how you thought it compared.

  18. Rose
    January 28th, 2010 @ 2:25 pm

    Curious how you thought it compared.