Now do it

Thanks to C-SPAN I have no idea what the bloviocracy thinks about Obama’s speech last night, and I watched it all alone, too. So although I don’t presume to have a clue what ‘average’ people might have thought of it, I can offer the following completely unfiltered reactions of one viewer.

Some aspects of these formal speeches before Congress are completely distasteful to me, like the tiresome anecdotes about Good Old Joe from Racine, Wisconsin (or one of those damn states out there) and how his life should inspire us. I had enough sermons as a kid to last me well into the next incarnation and never got over my caged fury at having to listen to such crap week after week. So obviously these three-hanky set pieces are not aimed at me.

In fact, the august setting and the solemnity of the proceedings make me feel that the oratorial tone should be set even higher rather than be pitched to a public weaned on Days of Our Lives. I got a chill seeing the symbolic entry into the legislative seat of the detainers of the other two powers with the chief of protocol declaiming, ‘The Chief Justice’ and ‘The President’s Cabinet’. Obama standing in the well was quite moment, a monument to the vitality that remains in our system. Two years ago, not one of the people in that hall would have imagined he would beat them all at their own game. We did that.

Obama also wasn’t nearly as slick an orator as we’ve been primed to expect, and I don’t think he’s at his best with a prepared text and an all-pol audience, rather than a congregation-style crowd of average folks. He’s not much of an actor, and the lines didn’t come across as smoothly as, say, Saint Ronald would have delivered them.

But setting my personal tastes aside, I got the distinct feeling as the speech progressed that I was witnessing a world-class reaming of the Republicans by a master. For me (and I’m curious if the Received Wisdom will agree), the most telling moment was his nod to Republican discourse about keeping the deficit down and not saddling ‘future generations’ with a debt they cannot pay. The cheers at that line had a slightly different timbre—one could sense that they were coming from the other aisle.

Then he chuckled and made a joke as if he knew that was the moment he would get their applause. ‘See, I knew we’d find something to agree on.’ Friendly, unthreatening, nonpartisan, flexible, not an ounce of vindictiveness, right?

But then came the skewering: we have to work on that because of the TRILLION-DOLLAR DEFICITS YOU GUYS LEFT US. Huge cheers from the Democratic side. Perfect game of rope-a-dope.

I hope I’m not indulging in wishful thinking to perceive a set of ambitious policy goals and a determination to not be distracted from making them happen. We know he’s all about compromise and cooperation, but that wasn’t the keynote of the speech. Rather, he sounded pretty pissed off, which is where most of the rest of us are these days.

For example, it’s good to know that health care reform is not going to be put off to some remote later date, i.e. never, given that the economic collapse gives us a golden opportunity.

There’s plenty in the Obama Administration I’m not crazy about, but the policy timidity that all his establishment advisors have generated for five weeks was not on display last night. That was the old Obama, the one we elected, and I sat and listened to a whole speech by a president from start to finish for the first time in decades. Minus the soggy bromides and soapy humanizing, I’m ready to be governed by this guy.