White House/Pete Souza
President
Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address in the House
Chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Jan. 25, 2011.
Karlyn Bowman:
In recent weeks, President Obama’s overall approval rating has inched up in several major polls, primarily because of greater enthusiasm among his core supporters. Still the president’s six-year cumulative average approval rating is below that of his predecessors at this point in their presidency.
For the first time in a long time, Americans sense the economy is improving, and they are slightly positive about the administration’s role in the recovery. According to a Pew Research Center poll released this week, “For the first time in five years, more Americans say Obama’s economic policies have made conditions better (38%) than worse (28%); 30% say they have not had much of an effect.” But caution is in order. In this poll and others, the responses are not strong. It is far from clear from the surveys that Americans believe, as the president said in Wayne, Michigan, on January 7 that “America’s resurgence is real.” Americans don’t trust the recovery yet, and most people don’t feel optimistic about their own finances. In the same Pew poll, 55% said their family’s income was falling behind the cost of living, virtually unchanged from the 57% that gave the response a year ago. Thirty-seven percent in the new poll said they were “staying about even.”
Americans want to return to their normal optimism about the country, but the after-effects of the 2008 financial crash are still being felt. In his State of the Union message, Obama will emphasize the positive news. But at least at this point, America isn’t fully on board.
Domestic policy
Katharine Stevens:Obama has stressed the importance of high-quality early education in his last two State of the Union addresses, and he’ll doubtless do so again on Tuesday night. He’ll probably underscore the recently-announced $750 million in new federal funding aimed to increase access to child care and preschool in disadvantaged communities. Hopefully he’ll highlight the strongly-bipartisan 2014 reauthorization of the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act, which provides child care assistance to low-income working families. And he’s likely to urge Congress to help states make high-quality pre-K available to all four year-olds.
There’s strong evidence that high-quality early education programs can make a real difference for low-income children, and public support for government action in this area is growing. But going forward, here are two things for lawmakers to keep in mind.
First, how programs are designed and implemented is as important as if they’re done at all. As University of Chicago economist and early childhood education proponent James Heckman has emphasized, “Quality really matters.” Tacking pre-K onto failing K-12 public schools as an additional grade is not a smart strategy for building effective early education. And rather than scaling untested programs up too quickly, new initiatives should test what works before launching big-scale expansions.
Second, early education doesn’t necessarily mean pre-K. In fact, research suggests that pre-K can almost be too late for the most disadvantaged children who are often the primary targets of those programs in the first place. Learning starts at birth, and the brain development of children from ages zero to three is especially crucial. Although pre-K is currently in the spotlight, more attention should be directed to younger children and to parents as their children’s “first teachers.” Investments in good child care and voluntary home visiting programs for at-risk infants and toddlers may well provide greater returns in the long run.
James Capretta:
President Obama will be delivering his first State of the Union address to a Congress fully under control of the Republican Party. One might think this would be an opportunity to kindle some bipartisanship on health care. Don’t count on it. The majority of newly elected Republican members of the House and Senate believe that the unpopularity of the Affordable Care Act was a major reason for their electoral victories, and they are determined to keep faith with their voters by moving to roll it back and replace it with a better, less governmental approach.
For his part, the president will say the ACA is working and will claim credit for the deceleration in health care cost growth, despite the overwhelming evidence that the ACA has nothing to do with the current cost trend. He will also suggest that he has always been open to good ideas on health care, and remains so. But reading between the lines will indicate that he doesn’t believe the GOP has any good ideas health care. At the end of the speech, nothing will have been accomplished. The result will be a continued partisan standoff over the future of the ACA that will last for the duration of the Obama presidency.
Andrew Biggs:
Then-Senator Barack Obama stated in 2008, ‘If we are firm in our commitment to make sure that [Social Security] is going to be there for the next generation, and not just for our generation, then we have an obligation to figure out how to stabilize the system. I think we should be honest in presenting our ideas in terms of how we’re going to do that…’ But since President Obama took office Social Security’s long-term deficit has nearly quadrupled, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
When President Obama took office, the CBO projected that Social Security would remain solvent until 2049. Today, the CBO projects the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted in 2030 – and when that happens, benefits for retirees would be cut across the board by roughly one-quarter. The president has neither proposed nor supported a comprehensive plan to keep Social Security solvent. When you won’t be running for office again, there’s no time like the present.
Alex Pollock:
Nobody supports an indefinite continuation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in conservatorship, run by their regulatory agency as a ward of the state, with zero capital—but so they continue nonetheless.
We need a reform which is simple, direct, and doable. The SOTU should propose to treat Fannie and Freddie exactly like all other “systemically important” big banks. This means giving them the same equity capital requirement as every big bank, namely, 5% of assets; designating them as the “systemically important financial institutions” (“SIFIs”) which they undeniably are; making them explicitly pay for their government guaranty exactly as big banks have to pay deposit insurance premiums assessed on total liabilities; and in general, removing all special treatment of them from all regulations. Nothing has to be invented—it all exists already.
This would significantly reduce the financial distortions, systemic risk, capital arbitrage and utter dependence on political agendas Fannie and Freddie now represent. Former Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said in 2010, “I hope by next year we’ll have abolished Fannie and Freddie.” We didn’t and can’t. But we can render them much less dangerous right away.
Joseph Antos:
President Obama will surely use the State of the Union address to trumpet the victory of his namesake health reform. Unlike last year, the open enrollment process has proceeded fairly smoothly, with 6.8 million people having chosen health plans or been automatically re-enrolled by January 9. (Not bad, unless you consider that the administration claims to have enrolled 8 million people during the previous open enrollment period.) Moreover, health spending has grown slowly—most recently, 3.6% in 2013. The president will undoubtedly take credit for that too, although he is not likely to embrace the Great Recession of 2007-09 that was the primary cause of that slower spending.
What he should admit is that we are far from solving problems of cost, quality of care, and the uninsured. Obamacare saves money only in a budget sense, with huge cuts in Medicare payments used to finance the massive expansion of federal health subsidies. This threatens access to care for seniors who don’t want the government touching their Medicare, and it has forced millions of people to replace the coverage they prefer with insurance that costs more and does not let them keep their doctor. Mr. Obama is not running for office again. He has nothing to lose by leveling with the American people. He might even find that candor helps when dealing with the Republican Congress—particularly after the Supreme Court decision on subsidies in the federal exchanges, due in June.
Kevin James:
There likely won’t be any surprises in the higher education portion of the speech now that the president has previewed his newest reform idea, two years of free community college for any student who is willing to “work for it.” What President Obama should say, however, is that since making the announcement he’s realized the country actually needs a higher education system that welcomes an array of providers that can better meet the needs of today’s workforce rather than a federally controlled public option that will likely crowd out such alternatives. And in that spirit, he’s withdrawing his “America’s College Promise” proposal and committing to work with members in both parties to identify barriers—such as the broken accreditation process—to new types of educational models that could likely offer students a higher-quality education at a lower price.
At the same time, it’s important to recognize that so many of the challenges with tuition inflation and educational quality derive from the fact that institutions have little direct stake in their student’s success. Therefore, the president will hopefully announce his intentions to work with members of both parties to increase market transparency around student outcomes, expand private financing options that could strengthen the forces of market discipline, put limits around federal lending programs, and work to give institutions “skin in the game” when their students default. These reforms would give institutions the incentives they need to ensure their students go on to graduate and be successful in the workforce.
Claude Barfield:
The Obama administration has embarked on a highly ambitious—and risky—trade agenda for 2015. Trade, however, is one area where both the president and Republican leaders in Congress have pledged to work in common. At this point, the two most pressing issues are passage by Congress of so-called Trade Promotion Authority, in which Congress agrees to an up or down vote, without amendment, for future trade pacts; and completion of negotiations for the 12-member Trans-Pacific trade agreement.
President Obama faces determined opposition from elements of his own party – the Elizabeth Warren wing, including labor unions, environmental groups and the Nader contingent. Before a national audience, the SOTU represents the president’s most effective platform for affirming his strong support for a TPA and the TPP—and his willingness to defy powerful interest groups in pursuit of the national interest. Trade should take a prominent place in his address to the country.
Benjamin Zycher:
It is unfortunate that the president will shunt reality aside in the context of energy and environmental policy. He will argue that renewable power—expensive, unreliable, and environmentally destructive—is clean, and both cheap and in need of continued subsidies. He will take credit for the large increase in US oil and gas production that has taken place on private land even as production on federal land has declined. Having argued a few years ago that more drilling would not yield lower prices, he now will take credit for the resulting sharp decline in energy costs despite the fact that it is private investment and technological advances that are responsible for that outcome.
He will argue that his policies are necessary to deal with a purported climate crisis not supported by the evidence. He will not mention that his policies would reduce temperatures by less than two one-hundredths of a degree even as they impose huge costs on the US economy. He will applaud a supposed climate agreement with China that requires literally no emissions reductions from the Chinese, who disavowed the agreement after only a few weeks.
He will not propose a reform of our ethanol blending policy despite the fact that it is hugely expensive, environmentally destructive, and so difficult to implement that regulatory delays have created massive market uncertainty. He will demand tightened air and water quality standards that impose costs far in excess of their benefits, and that depend on double-counting in any event. He will support automobile fuel efficiency standards hugely expensive, inconsistent with consumer preferences even when gasoline prices were far higher than now is the case, and that serve no sound policy objective whatever. It will be a depressing performance.
Foreign and defense policy
Danielle Pletka:How does one advise a man who believed a ball game was a better use of his time than a march against terrorism attended by dozens of his allies and fellow leaders? President Obama marches to his own drummer and he will give the speech worthy of the insular Obamaworld in which he resides. Those who misunderstand him, and believe he knows what is right, and deliberately does what is wrong, will rail against his failure to score Syria’s Assad or Iran’s Khamenei; his weakness on Russia, his embrace of Castro. They will seethe at his failure to resource the military, to pivot to Asia, to address China’s growing predations; and they will shake their heads in wonder at his willful ignorance of the spread of al Qaeda, ISIS and other Sunni extremist groups that will, one day, hit America.
Because they do not understand that for Barack Obama, many of these are success stories; or to put it another way, isn’t Assad isolated? Don’t we almost have a deal with Iran? Look at Putin struggling, Castro releasing political prisoners. Look at the wars that have ended, China’s cooperation on the world stage, and recognize that while hundreds of thousands have died throughout the Middle East at the hands of terrorists, there has been no attack on American soil.
The question for Mr. Obama, of course, is are these real successes? And at what price have they been achieved? Only the next president, to whom Obama will bequeath a global disaster scene of almost epic proportions, will understand the impact of the unprecedented global retreat this administration has sustained over two terms.
Ideally — and I’ll stick to the headlines here — we will hear from the president about:
- The reason for his implicit cooperation with the Tehran regime again targets in Iraq
- The reason he believes a nuclear deal with Iran that will allow nuclear enrichment, a military program and a program offshore in Syria will be good for America
- The reason the spread of al Qaeda and related groups through Yemen, Africa, Sinai, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and more is a real sign of victory in the war against “Islamist extremism”
- The reason Iraq collapsed after the war there “ended”
- The reason the US is leaving a force too small for the remaining battle at hand in Afghanistan
- The reason the US has done nothing to mitigate the wholesale slaughter of the Syrian people
- The reason the US has, after helping depose Qadhafi, washed its hands of Libya and allowed jihadists to control half the country
- The reason the president cites a “Yemen model” for actions in the Middle East despite the disaster of the Yemen model, the pernicious role of Iran and the spread of al Qaeda
- The reason he neither went to nor sent a soul to Paris to demonstrate solidarity against terrorism
Jim Talent:
President Obama ought to speak urgently and compellingly about the need to rebuild the tools of American power. The capabilities of our armed forces, relative to the threats they confront, have been declining for several decades, but the slow bleed became a hemorrhage four years ago, when the Budget Control Act and sequester imposed a trillion dollar cut on the budgets which then Secretary of Defense Bob Gates had proposed.
President Obama ought to support reversing those cuts. He doesn’t have to assign political blame for the current situation. He could simply note that events of the last four years – the threat posed by ISIS, Putin’s adventurism in Europe, and the Chinese military buildup, to name three – require a change of course.
The president should speak generally about the most urgent needs of the armed forces. The reductions in Army end strength must end. The number of ships in the Navy should be increased, so that the United States can maintain presence and striking power in the Western Pacific, the Middle East and the Mediterranean. The Air Force is desperately in need of recapitalization. All of services depend on modernization programs which simply cannot be funded given the current budget baseline.
The president believes that military power should not be the only or primary means America uses to defend its interests and pursue its foreign policy. He’s right about that. America should typically rely on the “soft power” tools, like diplomacy, trade, economic sanctions, and foreign aid. But the efficacy of those tools depends on the perception, among allies and adversaries alike, that the United States has the resolve and capability to defend itself if necessary. That capability is rapidly disappearing; without a change of course, it won’t matter how the president maneuvers in the global crises that are threatening to overwhelm him, and us.
Tom Donnelly:
What should our commander-in-chief, Barack Obama, say about our wars and the condition of our military in his State of the Union speech?
“During my last two years in office, I will try not to make it worse.”
Alas, this isn’t very likely, not only because it’s impolitic but because “ending” wars and reducing the ability to make war have been among the president’s principal policy goals and represent – in his mind, at least – two of his cardinal achievements. In withdrawing willy-nilly from Iraq and Afghanistan, he has deprived a future president of the opportunity (while perhaps creating the necessity) to defend our national security interests but also, with a big assist from Republicans who have confused “limited” government with “smaller” government, deprived the next commander-in-chief of the military means for anything other than the sort of leading-from-behind actions that mark the Obama Doctrine.
A decade or so ago, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld lamented that “you go to war with the army you have, not the army you … might wish to have.” As long as Barack Obama remains in the Oval Office and the Budget Control Act remains the law of the land, the United States will not have the military it needs, let alone one it might wish to have. The best we can hope for is that the president does no further harm.
Gary Schmitt:
President Obama’s State of the Union Address will fall short—indeed, will be irresponsible—if he doesn’t take note of the increasingly problematic state of the world. As the provision in Article II of the Constitution that mandates the president give the address makes clear, he is also on the hook to “recommend “ to Congress “such measures” as to try and answer the problems we face as a nation. The first step in doing so would be for him to admit, if only implicitly, that a global strategy of “leading from behind” is not working. Indeed, it is causing so much consternation among our friends, allies, and the world at large that it eventually will lead to security problems so significant that the resulting instability will damage even his own domestic agenda.
There are many advantages to “globalization” and the resulting interconnectedness of societies, countries, and markets. Yet the complication is that disorder in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East rarely stays confined to those pockets of the world. We may want, as the title to the early ‘60s Broadway musical suggested, “Stop the World—I Want to Get Off,” but it’s not a possibility.
Michael Mazza:
As in the president’s previous three January addresses, the pivot to Asia is unlikely to receive more than a passing mention. President Obama should, however, discuss North Korea’s recent cyberattack on Sony at some length, as it is relevant to American interests beyond Asia. While the president may prefer to describe the incident as one of cyber “vandalism,” he should be clear in explaining that his administration views it as an attack by a foreign nation on American workers, American assets, and American values on American soil. He should convey that he takes it no less seriously than he would a physical attack on the same.
The president should then explain, in as much detail as possible, the full scope of America’s response. He should lay out a plan not for a “proportional” response, but for an overwhelming one, which would leave Pyongyang seriously regretting the Sony hack. The point, of course, is not simply to punish Kim Jong-un, but to deter other nation-states from launching similar, or more serious, attacks in the future. For deterrence to be effective, adversaries must have a good idea of just how the United States will respond to provocative acts.
The United States and its allies are still coming to grips with how to effectively use and defend against cyber capabilities. The president has an opportunity to begin developing America’s strategy for deterring cyber-attacks—a strategy which is sorely needed, as North Korea’s recent hack makes clear, and which will be a crucial aspect of American national security strategy in the years ahead.
Derek Scissors:
What President Obama should say: “Economic competition creates prosperity. My administration is negotiating trade agreements with our friends in Latin America, Asia, and Europe that will break down barriers to competition and bring jobs, innovation, and growth to our country. I pledge to aggressively make the case for these agreements, to both Houses of Congress and on both sides of the aisle.”
Fred Kagan:
What is President Obama’s strategy in the Middle East? The question is simple but lacks any obvious answer:
- The president’s withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq in 2011 set the stage for the return of al Qaeda in Iraq (rebranded as ISIS). When ISIS took Iraq’s second city, Mosul, the president was dragged reluctantly into ordering a limited air campaign that has achieved limited effects. It has succeeded even partially only because of the increasing intervention of Iranian military and intelligence forces and the integration of the sectarian Shi’a militias they support into the Iraqi military.
- He has refused to take any meaningful action against Iranian ally Bashar al Assad, even after Assad used chemical weapons against his own people and conducted systematic campaigns of starvation as a tool of war.
- He was reluctantly drawn into supporting the efforts of France and Britain to oust Moammar Qaddafi, but has refused even to take any real notice of the fact that Libya has now become a major safe-haven for al Qaeda- and ISIS-affiliated groups.
- He claimed credit for a successful counter-terrorism strategy in Yemen that has left the al Qaeda affiliate there on the comeback and still able to threaten the West with attacks.
- He has focused, instead, on ignoring our Arab partners in his pursuit of a nuclear deal and an alliance with Iran, but has already agreed to let Tehran off the hook on explaining its past efforts at acquiring nuclear weapons despite the requirements of multiple UN Security Council Resolutions, to say nothing of the interests of global nuclear non-proliferation.
Leon Aron:
What the president should say: “We are deeply troubled by Russia’s continuing aggression against Ukraine in flagrant violation of the Minsk Agreement, signed by Moscow. The US and European diplomats continue to work hard to negotiate a peaceful resolution, which must include not just a cease-fire, which is easy to violate (and which Russia has violated again and again) but a complete withdrawal of all Russian troops, in or out of uniform, from Ukraine; the disarmament of militias, pay-rolled and armed by Moscow; and the establishment of inviolable border between Russia and Ukraine. Until this happens, no relaxation, not to mention rescinding, of sanctions on Russia can even be discussed.
“Unfortunately, it does not seem that the Kremlin will chose to change its mind any time soon. I know it because, as we learned again and again from tragedies and wars caused by fascism and communism, what matters is what dictators tell their own people and not what their diplomats say to their counterparts. And the daily poisoning of the Russian people’s minds and hearts by the monopolistic government propaganda on state-controlled national television is beginning to surpass even Soviet totalitarianism in the viciousness of its anti-Western, especially anti-US, content, and the sophistication, as well as depth and sweep of penetration that spills outside of Russia.
“This Stalinist propaganda campaign of portraying Western democracies as Russia’s mortal enemies who seek to undermine Russia’s sovereignty and enslave its people, which shows no sign of slacking, is designed to justify the Kremlin’s continuing aggression against Ukraine, excuse the increasing domestic repression and explain for mounting economic hardships – and, most troublingly, to prepare the country for a possible aggression against other neighboring states. This toxic propaganda bacchanalia must stop!”
Nicholas Eberstadt:
President Obama can help salvage his tattered foreign policy reputation by announcing in the State of the Union that he is committed to leaving his successor a smaller North Korea problem than he inherited– and systematically following through on that promise for the remainder of his term.
North Korea policy is one area of foreign policy where the Obama administration can claim to have fared markedly better than his predecessors. Unlike Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Barack Obama has no cringe-worthy, obvious “unforced errors” in dealings with Pyongyang blotting his record. Moreover he has played a creditable game of Whack-A-Mole against the Kim family’s unending international military extortion gambits. Notwithstanding ambivalence toward other highly questionable regimes, the president has never concealed his distrust of and disdain for this dictatorship. In fact, his instincts have served him well here–which may be why North Korean authorities harbor such animus toward him. (Remember when they called him a “wicked black monkey”?)
“Strategic patience” is fine—as for as it goes. But leaving a smaller North Korea problem for our 45th President will take more than patience alone. It will require active and coherent effort on a multiplicity of fronts, defense and diplomacy among them. For example: Beijing (and, once again, Moscow) must be held to account for their support of this most odious of regimes. Defensive countermeasures to reduce North Korean killing power overseas can be methodically implemented. And the US can undertake serious and sustained planning with her allies for reunification of a Korea free and whole.
Reducing the North Korean threat is an honorable and worthy presidential objective—and would be a legacy the Obama administration could rightly take pride in.
Mackenzie Eaglen:
President Obama should use his State of the Union address to proactively make the case to Congress and the American people that their fellow citizens defending our way of life are struggling under automatic budget cuts at the same time the number of threats are rising and the world is becoming increasingly volatile. Early reports indicate that the president plans to request a Pentagon budget about $35 billion over legal caps in a few weeks for the next fiscal year. This is the minimum needed to begin rebuilding and reforming America’s defenses.
While all parties share the blame for the Budget Control Act’s mindless spending cuts that hit the military disproportionately harder than any other group, President Obama should go on offense and make a positive case for why the troops really cannot do more with less any longer. The ball will then be in Congress’ court to see President Obama’s defense budget and raise it—as is so urgently needed by those in uniform.
Dan Blumenthal:
The president should say: “I have spoken quite a bit about the cyber threat. It’s main source is the PRC, a country that seems determined to compete with us economically and military in Asia. I will work with the Congress to quickly pass the TPP and to reverse the sequester defense cuts to create a freer and more prosperous and secure Asia. ”
Katherine Zimmerman:
How will the president reassure Americans that they are safe from terrorist attacks? Safe in their travels abroad, our diplomatic missions, or most importantly, here at home? The United States may be less vulnerable to attacks from foreign fighters trained in Iraq and Syria than our European allies, but we are also a bigger target. Both al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) are calling for lone-wolf attacks, and one will succeed at some point.
Events in the Middle East and elsewhere directly affect Americans’ safety at home. Rising sectarianism in the Middle East is driving radicalization, as is the competition between al Qaeda and ISIS for leadership of the global jihadist movement. Instead of remaining contained to the region, the violence will, and has spread. The attacks in Paris earlier this month and Sydney, Australia, in December are a byproduct of these symptoms, to which the US is not immune.
The global jihadist movement has mobilized in a way that we have not seen before. Foreign fighters are flowing into Iraq and Syria, joining al Qaeda’s Syrian group Jabhat al Nusra or ISIS, which spans the border. They are answering a call to protect the Sunnis. A group with Iranian ties in Yemen, the al Houthi movement, expanded its presence from its base in the north down toward south Yemen, driving local populations to side with either the al Houthis or al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Somalia’s al Shabaab operates throughout East Africa, though it no longer governs the territory it once held. And Libya is an open front. There are al Qaeda-linked training camps in the southwest and radical Islamist groups linked to ISIS or al Qaeda in the northeast. And this ignores what will probably be the reopening of the Afghanistan-Pakistan front once the US completes its withdrawal of forces.
The question is what will change in America’s current strategies against al Qaeda and ISIS, because it is now readily apparent that neither has reduced the threat.
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