State of the Union Address,

Yesterday President Barack Obama has delivered his first State of the Union address; all week there has been lots of talk and speculations about the theme of the speech its content and the direction the president will take going forward. With unemployment at 10% jobs were expected to take center stage – and the president did not disappoint on that score. He said jobs will be his number one focus of 2010 and to tackle the budget deficit he promised a freeze on spending from 2011.

In a 70 minute speech, the president spoke about the economy for 10 minutes, used I 98 times, apologized that his election promise of change did not come quickly enough and praised the American people for their capacity to endure hardships, and emerge from it stronger.

Off the mark he defended his healthcare reform project and his controversial bank bailouts “they were necessary to save the economy” he said, tackled lobbying and openly criticized last week’s ruling by the Supreme Court that rejected long-standing limits on how much companies can spend on political campaigns, he urged the Senate to “advance” work on climate change and regarding his campaign promise of change, he said “I never suggested that I’ll bring change all by himself” – if that was an invitation for bipartisanship? It sounded more like blame.

Although, there were a number of policy changes – on energy he advocated the use of nuclear power, clean coal, and domestic drilling – on the economy he promised to cut capital gains tax plus the freeze on spending from next year. There was no mention of security – lessons learned from the Christmas Day Bomb attempt or foreign terror suspect being given the same legal rights as a U.S. citizen or the difficulties these rights created in providing critical intelligence.

Over all the speech’s content was predictable and expected – change is coming, we should work together – the president accepted zero responsibility for his own shortcomings – a year on and repeatedly he continued to blame George Bush!
If the speech was intended to win back the disaffected Democrats – it didn’t, if it was to win back the independents and swing voters – it didn’t do that either, even saying that he is “confidant” and “hopeful” failed to inspire – so where to from here?

Unfortunately, last night Mr. Obama looked vulnerable and just stubborn. He had a great opportunity to show the American people that he listens but he didn’t. I now understand why last week he told Diane Sawyer “I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president,” but I am still unclear on his understanding of “mediocre”.