Delivering his seventh and final State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, U.S. President Barack Obama sought to inspire and unify a country that is gripped by fear and uncertainty fanned by a fractious election campaign that is under way. The U.S will elect a new president in November.
Mr. Obama strongly rejected the narrative being popularised by Republican frontrunners Donald Trump and Ted Cruz that the Islamic State (IS) campaign was an existential threat to the U.S. “We just need to call them what they are – killers and fanatics who have to be rooted out, hunted down, and destroyed… That’s exactly what we are doing,” Mr. Obama said adding, “But they do not threaten our national existence.”
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Despite near total employment and robust economic growth, two thirds of Americans feel their country is on the wrong track and Mr. Obama’s focus on Tuesday night was to reassure them.
“..all the talk of America’s economic decline is political hot air. Well, so is all the rhetoric you hear about our enemies getting stronger and America getting weaker. The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. It’s not even close,” he said.
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But two faces that stayed in the frame throughout the one-hour speech reflected diametrically opposite responses to Mr. Obama’s soaring oratory — adulation by Vice-President Joe Biden and disapproval by Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan.
In an attempt to overcome the divide between Congress and the White House that has made governance difficult, Mr. Obama reached out to Mr. Ryan: “…I hope we can work together this year on bipartisan priorities…We just might surprise the cynics again.”
4-point agenda
Mr. Obama outlined a four-point agenda that he said was about focusing on the future beyond the next year. Elaborating on the four points, Mr. Obama repudiated in very strong words the anti-Muslim rhetoric that dominates the Republican campaign scene, struck the right chord on the question of inequality, strongly defended his foreign policy track record, and sketched out his notion of American internationalism in an unstable world.
“First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy? Second, how do we make technology work for us, and not against us — especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change? Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman? And finally, how can we make our politics reflect what’s best in us, and not what’s worst?”
Mr. Obama said despite the growth in manufacturing and employment, the nature of the global economy allowed workers less leverage for a raise. “Companies have less loyalty to their communities. And more and more wealth and income is concentrated at the very top…. That’s why Social Security and Medicare are more important than ever; we shouldn’t weaken them, we should strengthen them,” the President said.
Corporate greed
Referring to corporate greed and manipulation of the regulatory system that remains a hot topic of public debate, Mr Obama said: “Food Stamp recipients didn’t cause the financial crisis; recklessness on Wall Street did. Immigrants aren’t the reason wages haven’t gone up enough; those decisions are made in the boardrooms that too often put quarterly earnings over long-term returns.”
The President took potshots at climate sceptics on the Republican side, saying that even if it wasn’t true, there is a strong case for shifting away from dirty fossil fuel to clean energy that created more jobs for Americans.
Going solar
“On rooftops from Arizona to New York, solar is saving Americans tens of millions of dollars a year on their energy bills, and employs more Americans than coal — in jobs that pay better than average.”
Outlining his idea of America’s global leadership in the coming decades, which he said, would be of instability in the Middle-East, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in parts of Central America, Africa and Asia, Mr. Obama said: “We can’t try to take over and rebuild every country that falls into crisis.”
Threats from evil states, not failing states
The President said threats came not from evil states, but from failing states.
“Leadership means a wise application of military power, and rallying the world behind causes that are right,” Mr. Obama said, listing the new opening with Cuba, the nuclear deal with Iran, the Trans Pacific Partnership that would limit China and establish U.S leadership in Asia as examples of his internationalism.
Mr. Obama said for the American leadership to sustain, the country had to fix its internal politics.
Regrets hostile campaign
In a reference to the generally hostile nature of the Republican-Democratic relations and more specifically to the ongoing election campaign, the President said it was one of the few regrets of his Presidency “that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better.” “Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get attention,” he said.