Our Sputnik Moment
This Tuesday, in front of a divided Congress and a TV audience of 26 million, President Barack Obama declared, in a cautiously optimistic tone, "This is our generation’s Sputnik moment."
Wait—you may ask, what qualifies today as a Sputnik moment? How is it that Obama is equating a cold war Space Race to our moment in history?
Today, the United States is in the middle of a crossroads. China, India and other rapidly developing countries are threatening America’s superpower status. Our economy, despite a year of consistent employment gains, is still sputtering along. Our civil society is plagued by a rancorous, even detrimental public discourse, something that may have contributed to the fatal shootings in Tucson, Arizona. We are fourteen trillion dollars in debt to countries like China—a debt that increases $50,000 every second, according to the U.S. Debt Clock.
At the end of the day, this may be what distinguished the State of the Union Address from the incredible rhetoric that Obama usually provides—the speech was a frank assessment of America’s place in the world, along with the reminder that the United States’ destiny is not written for us, but by us. Obama’s empowering, even nationalistic declaration of a "Sputnik moment" in our history comes with a hint of caution but also inspiration – after all, we have the power to shape our destiny, just like the Americans fifty years ago who defied the odds to help the U.S. win the Space Race.
The heavy whopping that the Democrats took in the November 2010 elections brought to Washington a wave of Republicans, who took over the House and gained a larger minority in the Senate. Realizing that he could not advance his liberal agenda, Obama decided, Tuesday night, to tell the American people that he would focus on creating a slimmer, more efficient government that would only target investments at key areas. In energy, Obama set a goal that 80% of American energy will be clean by 2035 and one million electric vehicles by 2015. In education, he vowed to make a permanent tuition tax credit of $10,000 for four years of college. In infrastructure, Obama aimed to provide 98% of Americans with high speed internet by 2015, along with high-speed rail access to 80% of the population. And to pay for these investments, Obama would freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years (thereby reducing the deficit by $400 billion), and restructure the government for the first time in many decades.
It is clear, therefore, that Obama wants to move towards the center. His vision of government, at least for the next two years, is a leaner, more efficient driving force for economic growth. As a liberal, I am a little upset by his move to the center – but I recognize the enormity of U.S. debt and the divisiveness of Congress forces him to do so. The American people, as a whole, also recognize the compromises he’s making, which is why 92% of viewers approve of the speech, according to a CBS News Poll.
Now, many Republicans who watched the speech last night will complain. They will complain about the lack of specificity in Obama’s policies and plans. They will, as usual, say that the government is too big and that we have to rein in the deficit. They will blindly tell Americans that Obama is spending too much, and instead of investing in education, infrastructure and scientific research, Obama should have pumped money into the corporations of the richest 1% in the nation so that the wealth trickles down to all the rest of us.
The Republicans can continue to follow their talking points, as Representatives Paul Ryan and Michelle Bachmann did in their responses to the State of the Union. Or they can realize that, in the words of Obama, "each of us is a part of something greater—something more consequential than party or political preference." Obama has made some big compromises, and conservatives must make theirs.
That said, Obama’s theme throughout the speech, interestingly enough, was the past versus the future, not the left versus the right, as in previous addresses. He dedicated only a minute to encouraging bipartisanship and the differences between each party in an hour-long speech. His rhetoric, instead of "let’s work together, democrats and republicans," was "let’s win the future, like we did a half century ago with the Space Race." The nationalistic tone was a fresh departure from the politically dominated rhetoric that Obama usually employs. After all, when it’s the U.S. versus China, South Korea or India, bipartisanship is a given.
Obama found his footing for the next two years on Tuesday night. His blueprint is to pursue a leaner, smaller government that remains a central driving force of America’s economy to push America forward. "That’s how we’ll win the future," Obama said. In a way, Obama, on Tuesday, felt like a mix of FDR, Clinton and Reagan. Obama’s defense of Social Security and investment in target areas felt like an excerpt from a FDR speech; his heavy focus on the economy and jobs in the speech were reminiscent of Clinton’s "it’s the economy, stupid" slogan in his campaign; and the nationalistic, cold-war, and "race for the future" rhetoric reminded Americans of a Reagan speech. All in all, it was a speech that amalgamated the styles of three great presidents into one, and a state of the union that may very well signal the turning point to the next surge of the United States.
As Obama affirmed yesterday, "We do big things." Yes, indeed – we do big things. This country was the first nation to be founded on the idea of liberty, a republic that saved others from tyranny — and forty-one years after we won the Space Race, the President on Tuesday called on all of us to compete for the future of the 21st century together.
In Obama, Republicans See One of Their Own
President Obama laid out a sweeping agenda for governance in the coming year in his State of the Union address last night. Touching on a vast array of topics, the hour-long speech sought to reframe his presidency and redefine his agenda in response to the results of the midterm elections.
And yet, for all of the rhetorical flourish, there was something distinctly off-putting about the President’s proposals: they weren’t his. Many of them, in fact, have been expressed for years from the other side of the aisle, often loudly so. On issues such as the 1099 rule-- a clause in the President’s health care legislation that obliges businesses to fill out IRS forms for every $600 they spend-- his remarks ran directly contrary to the agenda Obama has pursued for the past two years.
However infuriating this may have been, it’s important to see this development for what it is-- a jump onto the Republican bandwagon. It’s a retreat from the political alliance between Obama and the congressional Democrats, and a surrender to cogent economic arguments from the right. But the President’s shift transcends the back-and-forth of politics. His embrace of reforms that will make government "more affordable… more competent and efficient" will benefit all Americans.
The President even seemed to be reading from a Republican wish list at times. Cutting domestic spending, ending earmarks, cutting the corporate tax rate, simplifying the tax code, advancing on free trade agreements, slashing business regulation, consolidating federal agencies-- there was honestly very little for someone of my political stripe to dislike.
It was about more than just backtracking on past policy, though: President Obama nearly repudiated his vision for the proper role of the federal government. "None of us can predict with certainty what the next big industry will be, or where the new jobs will come from," he said. "I’m not sure how we’ll reach that better place beyond the horizon, but I know we’ll get there. I know we will." Did he not advocate for billions of dollars in industry-specific subsidies over the past two years? Was all of this money spent on a false pretense, on shaky economic reasoning-- as Republicans have argued time and again?
When Obama defended the most significant accomplishments of his time in office, he struck a conciliatory tone that left nearly everything open for negotiation. It was far from the defiant "line in the sand" speech that I imagine some hard-line liberals would have desired. While he said, for example, that he "will not hesitate to create or enforce commonsense safeguards to protect the American people," he also pledged to fix rules that "put an unnecessary burden on businesses." While he vowed to defend specific elements of his health care law, such rules on pre-existing conditions, he wanted to be "the first to say that anything can be improved." What happened to his apparently unwavering confidence as he pushed for cap-and-trade or health care bills? Are these misgivings political or heartfelt?
His rhetoric, however, seemed to stray when he addressed export industries. At three points in his speech, Obama construed world trade as a zero-sum game: the more we export, then the less we import, and the more jobs we have, and the better off we are, according to his logic. This is plainly false. It’s mercantilism-- the flawed notion that national prosperity only comes from shipping out more than you ship in. "The more we export, the more jobs we create at home," Obama said. "At stake is whether new jobs and industries take root in this country, or somewhere else…[and whether] we want to win the future—if we want innovation to produce jobs in America and not overseas."
Innovation can and will produce new jobs and industries both in America and overseas, making Obama’s attachment to exports disturbing. Are we somehow better off if the goods we produce and sell get shipped overseas, where they cannot be used by Americans? Or is it just because that the export industry is made up of large corporations with deeply-entrenched political influence? Does he intend to favor these companies—such as General Electric and JPMorgan, from which he’s recruited top advisers—at the expense of the domestic service industry, which is less politically organized?
While the President’s new stance represented some progress on our gaping fiscal deficit, his comments were hardly impressive in this regard. He did manage to throw cold water on those who had hoped the issue might disappear, saying that "we have to stop pretending." He said it was time to "confront the fact that our government spends more than it takes in. That is not sustainable." Yet when it came to the moment where he might propose the deep, painful cuts to entitlements needed to even out revenues and spending, this gravity vanished. He spoke vaguely about "reducing health care costs" for Medicare and Medicaid and a "bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security," and there was a reason for this ambiguity. There is no such thing as a government policy that could provide us with health care that’s cheaper, better, and more accessible all at the same time. There are trade-offs, Mr. President, which you have failed to acknowledge.
The President’s case for fiscal discipline wasn’t helped by how he seemed to congratulate his own efforts, which represent only the tiniest fraction of the austerity required. "This freeze will require painful cuts...[and] I’ve proposed cuts to things I care deeply about, like community action programs." Does the President really think that solving our fiscal crisis will come down to, say, scaling down the Forest Service or faith-based initiatives? No, the choices our federal government will have to make in order to live within its means will be much more painful. It will mean deciding between treating terminal cancer under Medicare or teaching electives in public high schools. Is he prepared to make those kinds of choices? Is the American public prepared for those sorts of decisions?
But despite these objections, the President has swung with "the pendulum of public opinion, at least on economic issues," as Joss van Seventer ’10 predicted in The Exonian last year. Obama has accepted that "the world has changed" and that his capacity to change it is significantly limited. Like all those he follows, the presidency has humbled him. He’s relegated himself to the only power a president can honestly claim to have—the nation’s tone-setter, its cheerleader, its public face. He may "spur on" progress, but—as he put it himself—it’s the "free enterprise system [that] drives innovation."
No comments:
Post a Comment