President Obama must agree with my recent post that it is possible to herd cats. In any case, he gave it a good try Wednesday night in his first State of the Union address to Congress.
- For the Left, he offered up bank bashing, gays in the military, immigration reform, green jobs, college subsidies, curbs on corporate fat cats, taxes on the rich and - let's not forget - another shot at health care reform.
- For the Right, he extended tax cuts for the middle class, small business loans, nuclear power and "drill-baby-drill," cuts in capital gains taxes, a 3-year partial freeze on federal spending, a budget control commission and a push to increase U.S. exports.
- For the Independents, fiscal restraint, curbs on Wall Street excesses and renewed efforts at bipartisanship to actually get things done in Washington.
- For the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, the back of his hand for last week's disastrous 5-4 decision opening what he called "the floodgates" for corporate cash in political campaigns.
- For unemployed Americans: jobs, jobs, jobs.
- For the rest of the world, well not so much this time around. It was 55 minutes into the President's 70-minute address before he even got around to foreign affairs. And then about the only noteworthy items in this 7-minute segment was a promise to pull all combat troops out of Iraq by August and his cheer leading for American aid to Haiti.
As you might suspect, he didn't exactly get all the cats into the corral - maybe not even most of them. Only time will tell.
The Republicans in the chamber held back from the "liar-liar" chant which marked last January's congressional address, but tittered and guffawed frequently over Obama's claims of transparency and even-handedness on health care reform. (The Republican response by Virginia Gov. Bob McDonald was short and clueless but Fox News managed within an hour of the speech to let both ends of the 2008 McCain-Palin ticket take their revenge).
Supreme Court justices endured their rebuke in stony silence. Even those justices whose dissents agreed with the President's position were as mute as misbehaving kids parked on a bench in the principal's office.
Obama's generals were just as stiff and silent when he vowed to end the occupation of Iraq, although they joined seconds later in the chamber's enthusiastic applause for the veterans chewed up in that war.
Progressives - and that would include me - always enjoy Obama's speeches, and this one was no exception. Sure, we're lap cats but we still hiss and scratch every time Obama starts up again with that nicey-nice "bipartisan" pandering to Republicans obstructionists in the Congress. But after Wednesday night, he's still got most of us in the corral.
-- David Lore