This is hilarious:
Castellanos on CNN: "A speech by Barack Obama is a lot like sex. The worst their ever was is still excellent. "
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) January 29, 2014
Gingrich’s reaction is even better:
Every Dem 2014 ad ever: Shot of GOP not clapping when Obama says "I firmly believe when women succeed, America succeeds."
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) January 29, 2014
The metaphor of the soldier slowly, relentlessly, grindingly putting his life back together was a powerful one for America – and Obama pulled off that analogy with what seemed to me like real passion. One aspect of his personality and his presidency is sometimes overlooked – and that is persistence. He’s been hailed as a hero and dismissed as irrelevant many times. But when you take a step back and assess what he has done – from ending wars to rescuing the economy to cementing a civil rights revolution to shifting the entire landscape on healthcare – you can see why he believes in persistence. Because it works. It may not win every news cycle; but it keeps coming back.
If he persists on healthcare and persists on Iran and persists on grappling, as best we can, with the forces creating such large disparities in wealth, he will look far, far more impressive from the vantage point of history than the news cycle of the Twitterverse sometimes conveys.
This was True Grit Obama. And it was oddly energizing.
When the book closes on this Presidency, given all he has done, President Obama will rank pretty high. Not among the greats like FDR, Lincoln, and Washington. But I think he will be regarding among the very good: Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, Eisenhower, Truman; and not among the very bad: Carter, Bush II, Nixon, Hoover, and Buchanan.
David Graham from The Atlantic:
As expected, Obama didn’t offer many huge initiatives. But this was not a downcast president, nor—with a couple notable exceptions—was it a stern scold attacking Congress. Obama seemed energetic and ready for his “year of action.” Yet many of the policies he talked about tonight were exactly the same ones he mentioned last year. With midterm elections on the horizon, is he likely to make more progress in 2014 than he did in 2013?
“When it came to the issues, Obama’s State of the Union was agreeable in tone — he laid out what he was for (on the economy, immigration, health care) but did so hoping that some Republicans could agree with him. It wasn’t confrontational. And not surprisingly, it tested well: According to CNN’s instant poll, 76% of viewers had a positive reaction to the speech (though the sample was made up of a disproportionate number of Democrats because those folks were more likely to watch the address). It also seemed designed to unite the Democratic Party ahead of this year’s upcoming midterm elections.”
My general reaction was that this was kind of a minimalist version of one of those second-term Clinton SOTUs that covered a lot of ground and conveyed the sense that the president was snapping his fingers impatiently at the louts sitting down there on the other side of the aisle. I regret he didn’t hit the inequality theme a lot harder—profits sky-high, wages stagnant, long-term unemployed left behind—but he made for some uncomfortable moments for GOP solons on the UI and minimum-wage issues.
And this is welcome news: Politico reports that senior House Republicans are “privately acknowledging that they will almost certainly have to pass what’s called a clean debt ceiling increase in the next few months, abandoning the central fight that has defined their three-year majority.”
“The reason for the shift in dynamics in this fight is clear. Congress has raised the debt limit twice in a row without drastic policy concessions from President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats, essentially ceding ground to Democrats. Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) are again ruling out negotiations over the nation’s borrowing limit, which would leave Republicans fighting against a unified Democratic front. It’s a tricky situation for the GOP in an election year: They would have to pass a clean debt limit bill or risk default.”
Indeed. As it will be for all time. The Obama Doctrine has been established. Congress is the one that pays for the spending it approves of, without any negotiation or concession from anyone. That is the way it was before Obama, always. And that is the way it will be during President Clinton’s and President Castro’s two terms.