Obama’s Fairness Doctrine

After three months of total immersion in Republican rhetoric and ideology on the campaign trail, it was something of a relief for me to see the actual President of the United States, not the GOP caricature, deliver his rousing State of the Union speech. It turns out that Barack Obama has been following the Republican campaign pretty closely. His speech not only was a response to the policies the Republicans have been proposing; it also pushed back, vehemently but subtly, against the style and spirit of the GOP race. It was impossible, watching Obama, to imagine him as “the most radical President in American history,” as Newt Gingrich likes to say. It was also hard to see him as pro–“European-style welfare state,” “socialist” or “weak” on foreign policy. The speech was pure jingo, from its celebration of the Navy SEALs to General Motors. “If the playing field is level,” he said, “America will always win.”

This was not a bold speech in terms of substance. The actual policy initiatives were Clintonian in their timidity. But there was a very different tone and attitude from Obama’s previous annual addresses. It was confident and optimistic. America had turned a corner. Recovery was on the way. Three million jobs had been created in the past 22 months, 160,000 in the auto industry he had saved. The President’s language was more colloquial. It seemed he had learned something from watching Gingrich’s debate performances. The blunt power of the central declaration of the speech–that those who believe America is in decline or that its powers are waning “[don’t] know what they’re talking about”–was the sort of line Gingrich has used time and again to excoriate journalists, except Obama delivered it better, without the sneer. This was not soaring rhetoric; it was smashmouth, bring-it-on swagger.

And yet Obama made some concessions to the more powerful Republican arguments against him. He quoted Abraham Lincoln about government’s doing only “what [the people] cannot do better by themselves and no more.” He repeatedly returned to the theme of making government simpler and more responsive. He talked about streamlining job-training programs–pace Mitt Romney–so that there would be only “one program, one website and one place” for unemployed workers to go for help. He talked about an “all-of-the-above [U.S. energy] strategy”–pace Gingrich–and promised to open 75% of offshore oil and gas fields to development. He talked about scouring the federal government for stupid regulations. He cited one that could require dairy farmers to spend $10,000 cleaning up spilled milk. “I’m confident a farmer can contain a milk spill without a federal agency looking over his shoulder,” he said. Ron Paul couldn’t have said it any better.

Even when Obama confronted the Republicans on the need for the wealthy to pay higher taxes, he did it in a way that was subtler than suggesting direct rate hikes. He once again proposed that people who make more than $1 million a year should pay at least 30% of their income in taxes–the so-called Buffett rule. It didn’t hurt that Romney had chosen that very day to make his record of massive income and puny taxes available to the public. It also didn’t hurt that Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, in a solid but unexciting official GOP response to Obama’s speech, came out for something very similar to the President’s plan: raising the amount the wealthy pay by closing the loopholes they use.

In the end, though, the President’s most important retort was about not policy but patriotism. It is traditional for Republicans to posit themselves as strong and Democrats as weak. But it’s harder now. For the first time, Obama really exploited the fact that he had ordered Navy SEALs to kill Osama bin Laden. And in his peroration, he brilliantly used the SEAL ethos of total teamwork as a metaphor for his vision of government. He had been given a flag by the SEALs who took out bin Laden, signed by each member of the team. “Each time I look at that flag, I am reminded that our destiny is stitched together like those 50 stars and those 13 stripes,” the President said. “No one built this country on their own. This nation is great because we built it together. This nation is great because we worked as a team. This nation is great because we get each other’s backs.”

This is, without question, the strongest argument against the Darwinian “freedom” Republicans are touting. It is a reminder that the Constitution was a stitching device, written to unify and control the states, not merely to liberate them. It may not win Obama re-election, but it will make the campaign quite a fight.

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