State of the Union: Not All Should Go To Waste

 

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  JAN 14

President Obama’s final State of the Union address, like its six predecessors, will not be remembered for long. Obama is in good company. Most recent Presidents and their spin doctors have tried to make the State of the Union much more than the Constitution intended and usually failed.

As messages go, a good share of President Obama’s  were not believable. He tried in vain, and maybe some desperation, to define international terrorism as a problem, but not a crisis. He tried in vain to preach the gospel of renewed economic vitality to millions of unemployed, underemployed, underpaid American workers, plus another 46 million living in or around the poverty level, plus more millions watching their retirement drift off into a foggy future of unknown depth and direction. The next day the stock market took another deep dive. The most egregious message related to how well we are treating our returning military and veterans. Veterans, in particular, have been badly mistreated at veterans facilities all across the country.

As a ritualistic constitutional exercise in communicating through Congress to the American people the speech came across as a wash, inspiring to the 43 percent  of Americans who think the President has done a good job and reaffirming the disillusionment of the majority who believe he has not. We are a nation of people, who in politics and some slices of life, see only what we want to see, hear only what we want to hear and believe only that which is cozy and comfortable.

If there is anything from the speech that we should hope will linger in the public consciousness for a little while longer, if anything should have resonated, it is the President’s honest acknowledgement of failure to reduce the rancor and anger in Washington and by default, across America.

“It’s one of the few regrets of my Presidency—that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better,” he said. “There’s no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide and I guarantee I’ll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office.”

South Carolina governor Nikki Haley was even more forthright in her response to Obama later in the evening.

“We as Republicans need to own that truth. We need to recognize our contributions to the erosion of the public trust in America’s leadership. We need to accept that we’ve played a role in how and why our government is broke.” She said.

Both seemed focused on Donald Trump’s bombastic behavior on the campaign trail. The obsessive and biased concentration of media coverage of Trump’s presidential campaign creates the impression that the rancor and radicalism in American politics is a Republican invention. Some of it is. But that is an easy answer, and as H. L Mencken said there are easy answers to most complex questions and they are always wrong.

The stridency in our politics in America is not new, nor unique, nor easily explained. There has been blame on both sides of the political aisle and down the aisle for more than two decades, stretching back in my generation to House Speakers Jim Wright and Newt Gingrich. The worst of it, to me, has not been Donald Trump’s foulness, but the awful innuendo of Republican racism by no less than House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, and a whole phalanx of Democratic leaders throughout the terms of office of President Obama. It didn’t start there but it has escalated dramatically in the last eight years. It has done much to destroy the mutual respect that is an absolute must in civil discourse and decision-making. There is no more insidious play in American politics than the race card.

Yes, plenty of blame to go around from politicians on the right and the left, to the angry agitators on social media, to the profiteering and propagandist behavior of the infotainment media.

President Obama could in the rest of his term and in his retirement contribute handsomely to the restoration of our political process to its rightful place as one of the world’s greatest experiments in self-government and democratic decision-making. He has the experience, the intellect, the gravitas and, one would hope, the resolve to make a difference rather than just talk about it. The unknown is whether he has the open mindedness, sense of fairness, and honest brokerage to do what former Presidents Ford, Clinton, and the Bushes have done so well in their post-presidential years; set aside partisanship and political activism in favor of partnerships, civil discourse, and common interest.

There is much to be done. President Obama cited some of the core challenges in the restoration of our political system — the gerrymandering of congressional districts, campaign financing and voter participation, but they only scratch the surface.

There are also serious fault lines in the way politicians communicate with the public, the education of the electorate, in civic engagement, in the influence of political parties, in political and social polarization, in the processes and procedures of governance, and in the loss of that mutual respect and trust among those we choose to govern. Did I mention the media?

We need not wait for a new President or a new Congress to begin the long, difficult and transformational changes that need to occur, not just in politics, but in public attitudes, public behavior, and public discourse. It is always the right time to air out our minds, open them to different strains of thought and reason, and engage in dialogue not with the arrogance that often comes from ignorance, but with the humility that comes from the awakening of the mind and the realization that the more knowledge you have the less you know and the more you need to learn.

“The mind is like a parachute,” composer Frank Zappa is often quoted as saying. “It doesn’t work if it’s not open.”

Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.