The state-of-the-union speech

The limits to verbiage

The president’s speech was underwhelming, which was probably better than the alternative

ONE thing you can generally count on when the lanky figure of Barack Obama approaches a podium is that you will hear a good speech; and the more trouble he is in, the better the speech is likely to be. He has never spoken more powerfully than just after losing the New Hampshire primary back in January 2008, or when the eruption of his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, threatened to derail him later that year. For his first state-of-the-union message on January 27th, the president needed something extra-special. His ratings are down below 50%, and the loss of a crucial Senate seat in Massachusetts a week earlier means that much of his domestic agenda, notably his efforts to reform health care, is stalled if not dead. But in place of the mighty oratory one might have expected, the president delivered an inordinately long, unrepentant but ultimately rather cautious speech that eschewed the tub-thumping and delivered a little bit to everyone.

There were alternatives to the middle course he chose. He might have tacked to the right, in the hope of winning over Republicans, but he would probably have failed. He might have lurched to the left, embracing the sort of populism that seemed presaged by his post-Massachusetts declaration that he was “ready for a fight” with the banks, but that would have alienated the centre. So he chose to remain, just about, the pragmatist whom this newspaper endorsed back in November 2008. But he gave no sign of how he plans to pursue his agenda or solve the problems that are piling up around him.

But what are you going to do about it?

On the economy, Mr Obama tickled middle-class voters with a small-change package of family-oriented tax credits for child-care, student loans and suchlike. This sort of micro-targeting worked for Bill Clinton when he found himself in a hole, but Mr Obama faces a far harsher economic environment. Unless the economy starts to recover powerfully enough to cut America’s high unemployment levels, this modest set of policies will seem footling. Such tiny giveaways are unlikely to help assuage Americans’ growing sense that this is an administration that has expended more effort on advancing long-held liberal dreams, like universal health care, than on securing middle-class jobs, nor to allay their suspicion that bail-outs are only for bankers. There is a deep populist anger brewing in America, and Mr Obama risks having cooled it barely at all.

The same is true for his efforts at fiscal rectitude. The Obama team has read the runes of Massachusetts, and has observed that one of the things that most angered voters there was the size of the deficit. Rightly so: the Congressional Budget Office gave warning this week that the deficit would run at more than $1.3 trillion this year, as a proportion of GDP the second-worst since the war (the worst was last year), with a long line of horrors to come. But the president’s response was another exercise in having it both ways. His promise to freeze non-security discretionary spending for three years was meant to reassure people who worry about a poisonous legacy of debt. But once military spending and entitlements (such as government-provided health insurance for the poor and the elderly, and Social Security) are stripped out, less than a fifth of the budget is left to freeze: and that freeze would be counteracted by the jobs bill that Mr Obama urged Congress to pass.

America cannot return to budgetary health without tackling entitlements. Mr Obama said he wants a bipartisan commission to figure out how to get the deficit down. The Senate voted down just such a plan the day before his big speech. Mr Obama therefore intends to set up one of his own. But the chances of Congress accepting (or perhaps even debating) the commission’s recommendations hardly seem encouraging in light of the rejection. A better speech would have laid out an outline for a return to fiscal health, not subcontracted it.

Other questions remain unanswered. Is Mr Obama ready to fight hard for the things he said he believed in when he ran for office—health-care reform, a cap-and-trade system to rein in America’s carbon-dioxide emissions, the rebuilding of America’s schools? Will he act on his promise to impose sanctions on Iran? The answer to all those questions, he said, is yes. But he gave not the slightest clue how he intends to accomplish any of it. He could, for instance, have urged the House to pass the Senate health bill, which is imperfect but better than nothing; or he could have reached out to Republicans by offering compromises. He did neither, and that was a waste of a podium.