Obama's State of the Union Message: An Advance Copy

'Publius' in London indulges in a bit of serious speculation:

Advisers to Barack Obama are concerned that there will be little time to prepare the vital State of the Union message, so an early draft has been prepared. We are privy to its content. Naturally, the speech may be entirely different:

Madam Speaker, Vice President Biden, members of Congress, distinguished citizens and my fellow Americans: Every year, by law and by custom, we meet here to consider the state of the union. This year we gather in this chamber, deeply aware of the challenges we face, both foreign and domestic.

Habitually, the President announces that the state of the union is strong. I hope that when I deliver this message in 2010, I shall be in a position to confirm such strength. In all honesty, I cannot do so this year. Despite the majorities enjoyed by Democrats in these chambers, it has to be said that the Union is deeply divided and has been so for many years. My administration hopes to change these divisions so all our citizens, black or white or Hispanic, rich or poor, young or old, gay or straight, feel part of a United States again.

We live in a global world, something that all Americans need to understand. All over the world, people are now interdependent. We can no longer take an isolationist stance in our domestic and foreign politics. It doesn’t work.

Abroad, we have been challenged in Georgia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, our occupation of Iraq is not welcomed by the international community, and our alliances have been weakened through our arrogant attitudes to leadership for the past eight years.

Domestically, we have many crises facing us. We have placed a band-aid on our financial markets but our economy is as weak as it has been since the 1930s. We have a national debt which is almost beyond redemption and we must bring it within bounds now if future generations of Americans are not to suffer economic blight. We trade in a global market. We have to be ready to challenge our global competitors by using our brains. We have the best technology but our goods are expensive. We must find ways to compete and win.

We have so many other issues to face. We have to prepare for the potential consequences of global warming, caused by our own indiscriminate use of our part of the planet. American healthcare has become a scandal of international proportions. How, in 2009, can it be right that 50 million of our citizens do not have affordable access to medical treatment, a human right offered in all other countries in the West?

Americans have faced dark days before. Using our ingenuity, know-how, willingness to work and sheer strength of character, we have won through. I am determined we shall do so now but we will need a new attitude to politics. No longer can the executive branch seek to dictate, nor will it, despite our majorities in Congress. And no longer can we afford delays when Congress blocks necessary legislation for political purposes.

A new wind is blowing through Washington, one of cooperation, not confrontation and one where blue riband committees comprised of our best minds from the worlds of politics, business, the non-profit sector and academia will look at new initiatives, sacrificing partisan political ideology for the common good. It is time America walked away from the “me society” and returned to the “we society.” This is not socialism. It is simple decency.

Let me put some flesh on these bones. In terms of foreign affairs, we no longer enjoy unipolarity, nor do we have the right to impose American-style democracy on parts of the world that are not ready for it. Soon, Secretary of State Gore will begin talks with the Iraqi government to agree the terms of withdrawal of all western troops from that country. He will also enter into discussions with the Afghan government for better support but with a view to a withdrawal of our troops as soon as practicable. These countries will receive material assistance from us and, hopefully, our allies but ultimately Iraq and Afghanistan must fight for their own right to self-determination. Secretary Gore will also embark on an initiative to shore up our many alliances by indicating that an era of listening has replaced one of dictat.

I am announcing tonight a new policy on our war on terrorism. No longer will we be simply “tough on terrorism and its causes”. Instead, we will become smarter about it. We will use our considerable assets and ingenuity to defeat this enemy. Next week, I will announce the members of a new bi-partisan committee who will consider how the Homeland Security agencies can be best administered. The large bureaucracy which now exists is too cumbersome and, possibly, unable to respond quickly enough to threats to our security.

Domestically, we have so many serious problems to face that my hoped for middle class tax cut may have to be put on hold. My administration continues to look at the position closely and I have no abandoned the idea. However, there are problems in executing this policy. President Bill Clinton, my Democratic predecessor in the White House, famously announced in his first State of the Union message, “you play the cards your dealt”. We have a national debt of $11.3 trillion dollars. That is some $5,000 for every man, woman and child in this country. For every dollar we collect in federal taxation, we spend 80 cents just to pay interest on the national debt. Put simply, only 20 cents in the dollar is used to pay for all federal expenditure on services for our people. Little wonder we are unable to pay down the debt.

My prime economic concern is for us to attack and reduce the national debt. If we do not do so, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will curse us for the inheritance we give them. Next week, I shall announce the membership of a non-partisan task force to put forward solutions to this problem. I will ask them to consider a levy, which will, no doubt, be called a wealth tax by my political opponents, upon those who have benefited from Wall Street’s excesses under the previous administration. I will ask all Americans, whose net worth exceeds $10 million, to pay 2% of that excess to a fund which will be designated and ring-fenced for national debt reduction. Bearing in mind that prudent investors achieve growth well in excess of 2% annually, this should be no hardship. Former Treasury Secretary Paulson, whose personal wealth is estimated at $600 million, would pay a levy of $5.9 million. Such a sum would hardly interfere with his way of life.

Over the past eight years, many large corporations have benefited from DC “pork” in the form of tax breaks. Often the tax breaks have not been used for reinvestment and employment but instead have been drawn in dividends for shareholders, which is an improper use of federal money. So, I will ask the task force to consider imposing a windfall tax on those corporations who have used the tax breaks to line the pockets of their investors. Such windfall tax will be ring-fenced to pay down the national debt.

Other taxation measures will follow. I will do my best to free up as much of working people’s personal income as possible so they can determine their own lives but not at the sacrifice of vital programmes like defence, social security, health and education. At the same time, Americans cannot think these programmes are sacrosanct. Changes may have to be made but I pledge that I will discuss the changes with you and listen to what you say. Be prepared for a new attitude, where my administration will seek to be smarter than previous administrations in coping with problems.

In particular, we will get smarter on global warming. Last September, former Secretary of State Baker was asked how a new president should deal with this most serious of environmental issues. His response: “The president should lead on new in initiatives without interfering with the American way of life.” In other words, do nothing. I cannot and will not sit on my hands. To those who say, “wait, the science is not proved”, I say if and when the science is proved, it will be too late. I hope soon to announce the dates for an international conference whose principal aim will be to develop the Kyoto protocols in a more meaningful way. I know what I am announcing will go hard in Michigan and other heavy industrial states but I will be looking for legislation to reduce carbon emissions within the USA by 30% by the year 2015 and 50% by 2020. And I will find tax breaks to help industries invest in smarter production methods. In the last analysis, if we are to leave a healthy planet for our children and grandchildren, we have no choice. I am determined to persuade my Chinese, Russian and Indian counterparts to adopt similar targets. Yes, this may seem naïve but consider what may be lost if we and our counterparts do not lead on global warming.

I will be asking Congress to consider a new Criminal Justice plan. It cannot be right that more than one per cent of our citizens are in jail, many on three-strikes laws where the crimes committed did not involve violence. I do not seek to tread on the toes of states rights but we need a better, smarter attitude to crime. Just being tough on it doesn’t work.

Healthcare needs my administration’s urgent attention. I do not know yet if we can come up with an acceptable, universal healthcare plan for all our citizens which will not bankrupt us. My predecessor’s economic failures have limited my ability to afford change in this area. Certainly, I do not envisage a system like Great Britain’s where service at the point of delivery is free. A system like that in France is attractive where use of the health system is often accompanied by a contribution from the user. Any new system will require huge initial investment. Before the summer, membership of another non-partisan committee will be announced, with the remit that they report within twelve months on the universal healthcare plan best suited for the United States.

Finally, I must voice my serious concern at the state of our country’s education standards. Most of our teachers are hard-working people. It is the system that hurts. We need a root and branch investigation of what has gone wrong in our high schools. My administration will consider the best way forward for our youngsters. This is not a case for a blue riband committee. Instead our leadership is needed so that we can equip our kids to compete in all areas of a global world. By this time next year, I will report our progress.

There are many other areas of our lives which could use government help. The elderly, infants and the disabled could all use a helping hand from government. I say “helping hand”, not “hand-out”. We will not dole out welfare indiscriminately. But we will not see the poor and needy go without when government helps the wealthy of Wall Street retain their way of life.

In the 1930s, President Hoover praised “rugged individualism”, the ability of the individual to stand on his own two feet in face of extreme hardship. Since the 1970s, the emphasis on individualism has gone too far. It cannot be right that CEOs receive millions and millions of dollars for their work, and often their failures, when middle class Americans are earning less in real terms than thirty years ago. Our society has changed from the “We Society” to the “Me Society” and if I am a force for change, it is this that I will concentrate on.

I know it is custom at the end of this address to invoke the almighty. I believe he is watching us but I am struck with the saying that God helps those who help themselves. We have serious, life-threatening issues to resolve. I reach out to both sides of the aisle of this august body and to those outside the Washington beltway to join with us and get to work to put a broken country back together so that, this time next year, I can announce our union is stronger than now. As my fictional predecessor Josiah Bartlet would have said, "break’s over".

Republican Blood-Letting: Knives Come Out for Palin

In interviews today discussing the Republican reaction to the elections, every news outlet has asked, "What about Sarah Palin in 2012?". My soundbite response: "Today's political joke doesn't become tomorrow's candidate."

Canuckistan sends a tip-off that bears this out --- Palin is going to be politically slain by her own Republican brothers and sisters. It's notable that the knives have been sharpened for Fox News:

[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wFJr3XRedYU[/youtube]

This was an obvious starter for internal GOP score-settling, given her self-promotion and some activists (step up, William Kristol) who still want to tout her, but I suspect that the Hockey Mom will only be the first to fall in the Republican in-fighting.

Reviving the Israel-Palestine Issue: Nader's Letter to Obama

A reader from Pennsylvania passes on a portion of Ralph Nader's open letter to Barack Obama. My own reading is that Obama is saved at the moment from engaging with this because of short-term political paralysis: Israel is effectively without a government, Hamas is just trying to hold together the economic and social situation in Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is not strong enough either to pick a fight or to pursue negotiations.

At some point, however, Obama and advisors will have to grasp the nettle. Do they take the lead in re-starting talks or do they carry Obama's campaign position from the spring, backing Israel? Do they do so even if Israel maintains its blockade on Gaza and interventions such as yesterday's tank crossing?

Ralph Nader to Barack Obama:

To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character,
courage, integrity- not expediency, accommodation and short-range
opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate
defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S.
Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which
bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization
and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and
their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman
summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation
magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of
Jewish-Americans.

You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the
Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a
detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of
Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful
resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with
the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to
the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the
Democratic Party, you supported an "undivided Jerusalem," and opposed
negotiations with Hamas- the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you
ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by
the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored
"direct negotiations with Hamas." Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is
what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace
with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote "Anti-semitism
today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state."

During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes
of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to
Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the
brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal,
cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United
Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during
the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400
Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that
decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab
League's 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the
1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations
between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap
politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much
shock and little awe.

David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip
succinctly: "There was almost a willful display of indifference to the
fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a
candidate, but not as a President."

Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not
utter a single criticism of Israel, "of its relentless settlement and
wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions
of Palestinians. ...Even the Bush administration recently criticized
Israeli's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see
www.atfl.org for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli's assault on
Lebanon as an exercise of its 'legitimate right to defend itself.'"

In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized
the Israeli government's assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks
on "the heart of a crowded refugee camp... with horrible bloodshed" in
early 2008.

Israeli writer and peace advocate- Uri Avnery- described Obama's
appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for
obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama "is prepared to sacrifice
the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital
interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to
find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama
has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future- if
and when he is elected president.," he said, adding, "Of one thing I am
certain: Obama's declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad
for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the
world and bad for the Palestinian people."

A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you
turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to
send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited
numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque
in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington
D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a
frightened major religious group of innocents.

Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008
titled "Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama" (by Andrea Elliott),
citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all
walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the
American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune
published an article by Roger Cohen titled "Why Obama Should Visit a
Mosque." None of these comments and reports change your political
bigotry against Muslim-Americans- even though your father was a Muslim
from Kenya.

Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even
the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of
the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking
at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former
presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.

Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but
his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid
Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to
sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy
Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a
stroll across the stage to "tumultuous applause," following a showing of
a film about the Carter Center's post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack
Obama!

Race and the US Elections: Thumbs-Down for the BBC?

Dr Robert Beckford takes issue with the BBC's presentation of the issue of race in politics:

On the BBC Special Newsnight on Tuesday, Jeremy Paxman ended the show with a brief interview with Baroness Amos and the grime rap star Dizzy Rascal. If this was a very unfamiliar pairing in most cases, with a cabinet minister and a south London lyricist speaking on the subject, it was a very familiar BBC editorial on black British life.

The BBC's ideology asserts that there exists an 'authentic blackness' that come from 'da street.' So rather than have a politician and historian or a sociologist and politician, there needs to be someone from da street to 'keep it real'. Amos brilliantly projected the Obama victory into the UK, specifically focusing on the unresolved and generally ignored questions of the structural transformations necessary for inclusion in public and private sectors. After all, Obama and many of his generation were at the tail end of affirmative action and one of its main exports, the emergence and mainstreaming of African American intellectual life. But for all Amos' brilliance, any meaningful discussion was derailed by Rascal's lack of understanding. It was akin to pairing Andrew Young with the likes of (deceased) rapper 'Dirty Old Bastard.'

In contrast to the plethora of African American intellectuals, politicians and commentators rolled out on CNN over the past few days I think the BBC's offering reduced black British comment to the level of farce — rendering it at best irrelevant and at worst a bit of a joke.

Scott Lucas on BBC Radio Scotland: What Now for the Republican Party?

My discussion with Robert McGeehan, of Chatham House and Republicans Abroad, on Good Morning Scotland is now on-line: it's at the end of the programme, just past the 2:53 mark.