In his final State of the Union Address, President Obama largely avoided requests for Congress to approve specific programs, instead focusing on broad themes about America’s future.
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Obama countered what he calls election-year “hot air” that he says wrongly downplays the economy and suggests America is weaker than its enemies. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley delivered the Republican response in which she articulated sharp disagreements with the Democratic administration, but opened with some respectful words about the president. Obama alluded to Biden’s own loss of his son to cancer this past year in tasking the vice-president to lead a new national effort to conquer the disease.
The fact is Obama, burdened by the triple-header of two wars and a recession, never got anything resembling a break from conservative Republicans.
Obama ended his speech with a poetic plea for cooperation in democracy.
I grew up watching the State of the Union addresses with my parents and always knew that it was something important.
Rep. Susan Davis said the President’s speech appealed to America’s “better angels” and harnessed the American spirit.
The president’s final State of the Union address was as promised: short, sweet and straight to the point.
“It’s about filling the gaps in employer-based care so that when we lose a job or go back to school, or start that new business, we’ll still have coverage”, he said.
The President said protecting the American people and going after terrorist networks is his number one priority.
In a statement, Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus said rather than signal a much-needed course correction, Obama took a “lonely victory lap before a country that is ready to turn the page”. And she unloaded on the man who’s leading the polls in her state’s crucial Republican presidential primary.
Obama, he said, “lectures us on civility yet he has been one of the most divisive presidents in American history”.
While Tuesday’s speech was light on the lists of proposals typical in such addresses, Obama had some, even confronting a Congress largely hostile to his agenda. “If I’m elected POTUS”, Cruz wrote on Twitter, using the acronym for president of the United States, “there’ll be an empty seat for the over 50 million unborn children killed since Roe #Stand4Life”. Among those sitting in first lady Michelle Obama’s guest box was Edith Childs, the SC woman who first introduced Obama to the “Fired up!”
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The president himself appeared to get momentarily caught up in the emotion of the moment.
