State of the Union Address

¶ … Union address is explicitly mandated in the U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 3: among the President's enumerated duties, it is required that "he shall from time to time give to Congress information of the Sate of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."

The applause and reaction during the 2014 State of the Union address was frequently, but not always, partisan. Obviously certain issues appeal to both parties: Obama received bipartisan standing ovations when he discussed issues on which neither party would dare seem less enthusiastic than its rival (economic competition with China, support for Israel, social mobility through hard work). Likewise, at the speech's conclusion, the overwhelming bipartisan standing ovation for the injured Army Ranger, Cory Remsburg, indicates both parties' desire to be seen supporting injured veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. However, on many political issues where the parties are polarized, the applause was quite obviously politicized: this was most noteworthy in the President's remarks on health care. No Republican could be spotted to stand or applaud for anything related to the Affordable Care Act.

3. In terms of substantive issues that were addressed by President Obama in the 2014 State of the Union address, I would like to focus on three: education, minimum wage, and healthcare. This reflect the basic rough order in which the President addressed these issues in the course of the speech.

Obama made reference to education early: "teacher" was the fifth word of his speech, the first person mentioned in a Whitmanesque catalogue of American workers, while the first sentence of the speech noted that America has its highest graduation rate in "more than three decades." He returned soon to mention a recent College Opportunity Summit, convened to address how to increase access to higher education. Ultimately these quick early mentions were included as part of a larger stated goal of "guaranteeing every child has access to a world-class education." (The phrase "world-class" suggested that Obama was pitching this in light of widely-publicized reports that America's ranking for educational skill and attainment has slipped badly among industrialized nations.) However, Obama mostly had hortatory inspirational rhetoric without many concrete proposals -- to the extent that there were proposals they were mostly couched in terms of how they would not increase government expenditure. He has encouraged "Race for the Top," which is a Federal initiative to encourage and provide incentive to individual states to improve educational performance: but a President can do nothing concrete about education on the state level apart from provide encouragement and incentives. He emphasized that early education was one of the "best investments" America could make, but did not urge Congress to consider any specific legislation: instead he mentioned pulling together a coalition including "business leaders" and "philanthropists" to discuss how early education could be expanded. And he brought up his plan to expand high speed and broadband access for schools -- presumably because education should serve the purpose of making students employable -- and emphasized that the partnership of industry and government had begun to implement this plan "without adding a dime to the deficit."

Obama's remarks on the Minimum Wage seemed like they were intended to be the centerpiece of the speech. Obama managed to segue into discussion of the Minimum Wage from a discussion of wage inequality for women, which got a fairly impassioned response. But then Obama introduced a hipsterish pizza-store employee and a pizza store owner from Minneapolis, and discussed how the owner had given all his employees a raise, as a recognition of the financial hardship attendant on those with service-sector jobs in the present economy. Obama then vowed to "lead by example" by issuing an executive order that affects all federal contractors, in which they had to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. This was more than a proposal, it was an executive action that Obama is permitted to take: but the point was that he expected others -- specifically "every mayor, governor, and state legislator in America" -- to follow suit. His rhetorical refrain of "Give America a raise" -- which he seemed almost embarrassed about repeating -- looked like it was written in case Obama found himself (inexplicably) faced with an adoring crowd like the ones he met in 2008, such that he could repeat multiple times to waves of applause. In the reality of 2014, it felt instead like a rhetorically constructed moment that the Congressional audience would not permit Obama to turn into a meme or hashtag. Since the discussion was framed by Obama in terms of overall congressional inaction, however, he was hardly playing to the audience in the room.

Health care, however, provided Obama with the most salient example of recalcitrance from the audience in the chamber. The Affordable Care Act began taking effect on January 1, and Obama restated its selling points: chiefly that anyone with a pre-existing condition can no longer be denied coverage, and that "if misfortune strikes you, you don't have to lose everything." He noted the number of Americans to whom health care coverage has now been extended by the ACA in the past few weeks. But this was not an issue where Obama was offering specific proposals, other than to suggest to Congressional Republicans "let's not have another forty-something votes to repeal a law that's already helping millions of Americans." He then pointed to the Governor of Kentucky, in the audience, as someone from a Republican-dominated state who had enthusiastically embraced the new health care law. Obama's message about health care was largely rhetorical and aimed at the House Republicans: that "we all owe it to the American people to say what we're for, not just what we're against."

4. Was Obama's speech a success? If we examine it in terms of concrete and substantive points, the speech is disappointing: there was very little in terms of actual proposals being offered, apart from the (largely symbolic) minimum wage increase for federal contractors. But this reflects the overall climate of Republican obstructionism that Obama faced throughout 2013. The actual state of the union in the past year has involved a government shutdown, total legislative gridlock, and polls demonstrating the massive unpopularity of Congress among all Americans. (An October 2013 poll claimed that Congress was less popular than cockroaches.) However, given the debased political conditions of 2013, we need to ask what success for Obama in this speech would even entail. Obama is not personally popular enough to turn the speech into a harangue against Congressional obstructionism: such a speech would look like an extension of the political polarization that is, indeed, the cause of much public disapproval. Instead, Obama used the speech to do the most sensible thing he could maange: he placed the issues solidly before Congress and ask them to deal with them, and he appealed to those outside Congress (mayors, governors, state legislators) to take action if Congress will not.