Obama's Fairness Doctrine

The President slaps the GOP candidates even as he invokes sacred conservative themes

Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty Images

US President Barack Obama greets lawmakers after delivering his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress on January 24, 2012 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

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...

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