Obama's last State of the Union address in three words: Disjointed, irrelevant and disappointing

WHITE HOUSE

By Edward Rollins

Published January 13, 2016

FoxNews.com

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As a long time observer of the political process and as someone who served twice in the White House, I remember the great anticipation for past State of the Union speeches.  It was an activity where many hundreds of hours and top level staff worked on the speech for many months before it was delivered. It was to be a recap of what had been accomplished and an agenda for the future.

I remember the excitement of the president going to Capitol Hill to address the nation, standing before the other branches of the government, the Congress and the Supreme Court, and either inspiring or informing all of just what the title states: this is the State of the Union.

Part of the drama has been the grand entrance into the people's House, the House of a Representatives and the president being mobbed by members trying to shake his hand or pat his back and for this one night he is treated like a rock star or to be more current like a reality TV star.

The repeated standing and applauding for the key phrases that appeal to the partisans in his party and the negative responses from the opposition.

Everyone is there!

Anyone  of importance in our government along with  the ambassador contingent  from the diplomatic community, is there on display for the nation to see.

This has historically been an opportunity for  a dramatic speech to the nation and the world and without question as important as any that a president might deliver. Tuesday night was the last of these that President Barack Obama will ever give.

As I watched the visuals, the new young Speaker, Paul Ryan, sitting alongside the vice president whom he tried to replace in the last election.  Biden, realizing daily that this is his last hurrah -- and privately telling people he wishes he would have run one more time against the faltering Hillary Clinton.

Speaker Ryan, who now holds more power than anyone except maybe the lame duck president, sits in a seat he never anticipated a year ago. He will be the one who sets the legislative agenda for the future and the president’s only retort is his veto pen.

I watch the one Socialist member of Congress, Senator Bernie Sanders mix and greet the members of the Joint Chief of Staffs of our military, with their stars on their uniforms and rows of medals on their chests.

There is not a member in this chamber who would ever have thought a year ago that Sanders would be viewed as a serious challenger to Hillary Clinton, as he now is.

For someone as skilled at giving a speech as our forty-fourth president, Mr. Obama failed miserably at either inspiring or informing us of the real State of the Union.

What he did do is give a political campaign speech. It was disjointed, irrelevant and disappointing. He is not running for a third term and the agenda he laid out is not what the country wants or feels. He looked tired and ready to move on.

He talked about how great we are as a nation. True,  but what he didn't do was set an agenda for his final year or for his legacy.

He set goals but failed to explain how we can accomplish them. He talked about leadership but has failed miserably as a leader.

On the very day the president is delivered his speech, the Iranian Navy captured two US Navy ships that allegedly were incapacitated and drifted into Iranian waters. Now Iran is holding these sailors hostage. Yet, there was no mention of this incident in the president’s speech.

This is an escalation of hostile behavior by the Iranians who just last month fired unguided missiles at our aircraft carrier , the Harry S. Truman, in the same waters. 

I can't imagine, if he was still with us, that President Truman would disregard these acts of hostility. He was a man of strength. With the country feeling that terrorism is one of our top problems, the president dismissed our concerns. Don't worry! We've got the strongest military in the world. We got Bin Laden.

This is what he said about Iran: "That’s why we built a global coalition, with sanctions and principled diplomacy, to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. As we speak, Iran has rolled back its nuclear program, shipped out its uranium stockpile, and the world has avoided another war."

I don't think so. Bad behavior by Iran is dismissed because President Obama wants to protect his sacred and risky deal.

The number one concern of the country is fighting terrorism. The recent home grown action by the terrorist killings in San Bernardino, California has made this more of a concern. But in spite of this, just this week the president is to release more prisoners from Guantanamo. It is still his top priority to close this prison in spite of strong objections from the Congress, the military and law enforcement officers.

Many of the prisoners already released have returned to the terrorist battlefield. "That is why I will keep working to shut down the prison at Guantanamo: it’s expensive, it’s unnecessary, and it only serves as a recruitment brochure for our enemies."

This is a speech that will not be remembered and will historically be irrelevant.

The man who was the most partisan president in recent history, talked about how disappointed he is that the partisan divide  has not healed.

The office of the presidency has been diminished under Barack Obama’s two terms. His party has been demolished at the State house level and in the loss of both Houses of Congress. But he still panders on.

This is not an historic presidency and he exemplified his "leading from behind" with a very forgettable farewell State of the Union. 

No wonder the country is desperately looking for new leadership.

Edward J. Rollins is a Fox News contributor. He is a former assistant to President Reagan and he managed his reelection campaign. He is a senior presidential fellow at Hofstra University and a member of the Political Consultants Hall of Fame. He is Senior Advisor for Teneo Strategy.

SHOCK: Obama Ignores 10 US Sailors Held Hostage by Iran; Brags About His Iran Nuclear Deal

by JOHN NOLTE12 Jan 20161,758

During his final State of the Union address, president Obama celebrated himself, attempted to polish his legacy, and bragged about his deal with the terrorist state of Iran. “That’s why we built a global coalition, with sanctions and principled diplomacy, to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran,” thePresident said. “As we speak, Iran has rolled back its nuclear program, shipped out its uranium stockpile, and the world has avoided another war.”

Also as we speak, although this went unspoken by the President tonight, the American people are on edge over the disturbing news that an increasingly belligerent Iran has taken 10 American sailors into custody and holds two of our U.S. Navy vessels:

The Islamic Republic of Iran seized two U.S. Navy vessels while they were navigating the Persian Gulf on Tuesday, detaining the ships and ten American sailors near Iran’s Farsi Island, the Pentagon said.

Farsi Island is home to an Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) military base.

It has been confirmed that the boats were captured by the IRGC, whose leaders are aligned with the regime’s hardliners and have expressed staunch opposition to the now-historic nuclear deal.

The White House said that the sailors were not mentioned by the President tonight because, “We do not see this as hostile intent, they’ve been well treated, and we have received assurance they will be released.”

If it seems incredible that an American president, a commander-in-chief, would not acknowledge such a thing during a State of the Union scheduled on the very day this event occurred, keep in mind that this is the same President who went golfing immediately after announcing the beheading of American journalist James Foley.

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC               

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Big Government, 2016 Presidential Race

In State of the Union, Obama Confronts Americans’ Fears

www.nytimes.com

Slide Show | President Obama’s Last State of the Union Mr. Obama delivered his final State of the Union address on Tuesday.By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and MICHAEL D. SHEARJanuary 12, 2016

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Tuesday set forth an ambitious vision for America’s future but conceded his own failure to heal the political divisions holding back progress, calling it a lasting disappointment of his tenure.

In a prime-time televised speech that avoided the usual litany of policy prescriptions, Mr. Obama used his finalState of the Union address to paint a hopeful portrait of the nation after seven years of his leadership, with a resurgent economy and better standing in the world despite inequality at home and terrorism abroad.

But Mr. Obama, who campaigned for president on promises of hope and change, and vowed when he took office to transform Washington and politics itself, accepted responsibility for falling far short of that goal.

“It’s one of the few regrets of my presidency, that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better,” Mr. Obama said, adding that “a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide.”

He acknowledged that many Americans feel frightened and shut out of a political and economic system they view as rigged against their interests, even as he offered an implicit rebuke of Republicans who are playing on those insecurities in the race to succeed him.

“As frustration grows, there will be voices urging us to fall back into tribes, to scapegoat fellow citizens who don’t look like us, or pray like us, or vote like we do, or share the same background,” Mr. Obama said. “We can’t afford to go down that path.”

He repeatedly sought to contrast Republicans’ bleak appraisals of the state of the nation with his own upbeat assessment. He called his opponents’ version “a fiction” and defended his decisions, many of them flash points for the partisan divide. Mr. Obama implicitly singled out Donald J. Trump, the leading Republican presidential candidate, for pointed criticism, saying that Americans must resist calls to stigmatize all Muslims at a time of threats from the Islamic State.

“Will we respond to the changes of our time with fear, turning inward as a nation, and turning against each other as a people?” Mr. Obama said. “Or will we face the future with confidence in who we are, what we stand for, and the incredible things we can do together?”

He also made an indirect but derisive reference to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, another Republican presidential contender who has criticized Mr. Obama’s foreign policy and urged him to “carpet bomb” the Islamic State.

“The world will look to us to help solve these problems,” Mr. Obama said of global challenges, “and our answer needs to be more than tough talk or calls to carpet bomb civilians.”

The speech, a mix of Mr. Obama’s often lofty rhetoric and punchy, colloquial language, drew more scattered applause than in earlier years. The president appeared liberated by his decision not to present the usual menu of legislative proposals, although it lasted an hour and four minutes, longer than some past addresses. Mr. Obama spoke informally at times, and with occasional flashes of humor.

“Now I’m guessing we won’t agree on health care anytime soon,” he said at one point, as the sound of a single person clapping on the Republican side could be heard in the chamber. Mr. Obama smiled. “A little applause back there,” he said wryly.

Mr. Obama opted for symbolism to make some of his points, leaving a chair empty in the first lady’s guest box to symbolize the victims of gun violence. The other seats were filled by an array of guests including a Syrian refugee. Among the guests invited by Republican lawmakers was Kim Davis, the Kentucky court clerk who became a folk hero to social conservatives for refusing to sign marriage certificates for same-sex couples.

In his remarks, Mr. Obama said America should harness innovation and not be intimidated by it. He called for a “moonshot” effort to cure cancer, to be led by Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., who lost his son to the disease last year.

The address before a joint session of Congress departed from Mr. Obama’s past practice of outlining executive actions intended to sidestep gridlock in Washington.

Instead, Mr. Obama sought to pose and answer the four central questions his aides said were driving the debate about America’s future, including how to ensure opportunity for everyone, how to harness technological change, how to keep the country safe, and how to fix the nation’s broken politics.

He called for an end to gerrymandering — the gaming of political districts to ensure one party’s advantage — reducing the influence of secretive campaign contributions and making voting easier. Mr. Obama also called on Americans to get more involved in politics and participate, a theme of his first campaign and of his presidency.

The speech was one of Mr. Obama’s few remaining opportunities to shape the public conversation before the nation’s attention shifts to the campaign to replace him that is already underway. Except for a final address at the Democratic convention this summer, Tuesday night might have been Mr. Obama’s last big speech.

“I know some of you are antsy to get back to Iowa — I’ve been there,” he said at the start, acknowledging that the political focus is on the state, which holds the country’s first nominating caucuses.

Mr. Obama was determined that the address be forward-looking, aides said, even as his time remaining in the White House is limited. The president called for compromise with Republicans on an overhaul of the criminal justice system, approval of a broad free-trade agreement spanning the Pacific Rim and new initiatives to address poverty and the opioid crisis in the United States. He proposed to provide jobless workers with retraining in addition to the unemployment payments they already received.

In an effort to find common ground with Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, Mr. Obama noted that Mr. Ryan, a Republican, supports expanding a federal tax credit for low- and middle-income workers. “Who knows, we might surprise the cynics again,” he said, noting a bipartisan budget agreement they struck late last year.

And he repeated past calls for legislative action on his domestic initiatives that have fallen short, including raising the minimum wage, revising the nation’s immigration laws and enacting stricter gun restrictions.

He used the speech to trace the arc of his presidency and its major themes: the economic collapse and recovery, the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the push for free trade and climate pacts, and his failed bids for an immigration overhaul and new gun laws.

Mr. Obama also argued that the country’s most acute challenges emanate not from the strength of adversaries — a primary criticism of Republicans who portray the president as feckless in the face of mounting threats — but from their weakness.

He defended his approach to taking on the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, describing it as a dangerous threat to the United States that must be dealt with, but not an existential one, and not a force that warrants a commitment of American ground forces in Iraq and Syria.

The president also said the United States is uniquely positioned to rally other countries to solve global problems, highlighting his work in forging a nuclear deal with Iran, opening a new era of relations with Cuba, pressing for a global accord reached in Paris to combat climate change and efforts to stop the spread of Ebola.

Republicans, too, used the occasion to contrast their agenda and their values with those of the sitting president, and to offer their own, far more negative assessment of his tenure.

“The president’s record has often fallen far short of his soaring words,” Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina said in her official response, delivered immediately after Mr. Obama’s. “As he enters his final year in office, many Americans are still feeling the squeeze of an economy too weak to raise income levels.”

“Even worse,” she added, “we are facing the most dangerous terrorist threat our nation has seen since September 11th, and this president appears either unwilling or unable to deal with it.”

“If we held the White House,” Ms. Haley said, taxes would be lower, spending slowed and the military strengthened.

“We would make international agreements that were celebrated in Israel and protested in Iran, not the other way around,” she said, referring to the international agreement Mr. Obama pressed for that lifts sanctions on Iran in exchange for restrictions to its nuclear ability

Last Chance to Talk about Himself and Anger America

Obama’s last State of the Union will try to counter electorate’s anger

www.washingtonpost.com

President Obama will deliver his last State of the Union address Tuesday at a moment when fear and anger seem to be driving both the American electorate and the candidates seeking to replace him in the White House.

His challenge? Communicate a message big enough to rise above the election-season vitriol.

To that end, the White House has promised a “non-traditional” speech that, in the president’s words, will cut through the “day-to-day noise of Washington” and celebrate the country’s capacity “to come together as one American family.” Instead of a to-do list of policy proposals that have little chance of passing Congress, he has said he plans to deliver a speech that will describe “who we are” as a nation — or perhaps more accurately, whom Obama, in the last year of his presidency, would like us to be.

The problem for the president in his seventh year in office is that the gulf between his vision of a unified America, one he has trumpeted from his earliest days on the national scene, and the political reality has never seemed wider. This final address from the House chamber represents one of his last, best chances to frame the November election.

On issues including guns, immigration reform and Middle Eastern refugees, Obama faces a deeply divided American public. Some of his signature political victories from 2015, such as the Iran nuclear deal and the opening to Cuba, have provoked a fierce Republican backlash.

From Eisenhower to Obama, presidents seem to have a penchant for some of the same lines in their State of the Union addresses. Whether war or taxes or health care, there are themes that repeat again and again. Take a look back at almost 60 years of history in a little over two minutes. (Jason Aldag/The Washington Post)

The divide is perhaps deepest on issues of war and terrorism, which are likely to dominate Obama’s last year in office as well as the upcoming election.

“We all expected to be in a different place, and we’re not,” said Julianne Smith, a former Obama White House official and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

Obama, his speechwriters and his national security team were still working on drafts of the speech last week and over the weekend, White House officials said.

In the battle against the Islamic State, Obama has struggled to balance intense fear of terrorism after last fall’s attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., with his conviction that there are no fast fixes to the problems in Iraq or Syria. The Islamic State occupies parts of both countries.

The United States is counting on local forces, backed by U.S. air power, to slowly take territory from Islamic State fighters. A bolstered counterterrorism effort will seek in the coming months to kill the group’s senior leaders through drone strikes and raids, officials say.

Only a year ago, Obama used his State of the Union address to declare the end of an era marked by 15 years of terrorism and continuous war. “Tonight we turn the page,” the president began last January. “. . . Tonight, for the first time since 9/11, our combat mission in Afghanistan is over.”

President Obama waves before giving his State of the Union address on Jan. 20, 2015. Obama will deliver his final State of the Union speech Tuesday. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

Today there are fewer than 15,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, down from a high of 180,000 when Obama took office. But the president’s “turn the page” metaphor already seems dated. In the past few weeks, seven American troops have been killed in Afghanistan, and the president’s top commander there has said he does not think further cuts to the current force of 9,800 U.S. troops are realistic anytime soon.

The effort to defeat the Islamic State will be “an overarching focus to everything we do around the world this year,” Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to Obama, told reporters this month.

The president has struggled of late to calibrate his remarks to match the country’s mood. “So much of his legacy was built around ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Smith said.

Obama has responded with a campaign that emphasizes the limits of American power to repair the Middle East and seeks to keep U.S. forces from being drawn too deeply into chaotic quagmires. The president’s approach has provoked heavy criticism from Republicans, who are promising more bombs and tighter restrictions on Muslim refugees.

“We will carpet-bomb them into oblivion,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), describing his plan for the Islamic State. “I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out.”

GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump has proposed a temporary ban on all Muslim immigrants to the United States.

Obama initially mocked the heated Republican rhetoric as fearful, weak and politically craven. “When candidates say we wouldn’t admit 3-year-old orphans — that’s political posturing,” he said in November.

A few weeks later, in a prime-time addressto the nation, the president took a different course.

“The threat from terrorism is real,” he acknowledged. “But we will overcome it. Our success won’t depend on tough talk or abandoning our values or giving in to fear.”

The State of the Union offers Obama another chance to make his case that the United States is strong and secure enough to stay the course and stick to its values.

But it also presents him a huge political opportunity to talk to the country about what kind of person should replace him. The worry among establishment Republicans is that Obama will seize upon remarks by candidates like Trump to discredit the party.

“I suspect he’ll be very tempted to paint the entire party with a broad brush as anti-immigrant, rather than seek out common ground,” said Michael Green, a former George W. Bush White House official and a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Obama faces a similar challenge on domestic issues such as gun violence, and he has sought to appeal to universal American values.

“The majority of people in this country are a lot more sensible than what you see in Washington,” Obama said at a CNN town hall meeting on the gun issue last week. He derided the capital and Congress as places where “the loudest, shrillest voices” dominate.

At the State of the Union, the president will use silence to make his case. The White House said it will leave one seat empty in the first lady’s guest box to highlight the toll of gun violence on the country.

On no issue has the country’s growing division been more shocking to the White House than on immigration. The president once hoped to find common ground with Republicans on the matter.

He gave up on Congress in late 2014, issuing an executive order that would defer the deportation of up to 5 million illegal immigrants, most of them parents of U.S. citizens and those who arrived illegally as children.

Republicans immediately denounced him as an “imperial president.” Texas and 25 other states sued to block the program, which has yet to enroll a single person as the two sides fight it out in federal court.

Since then, the immigration debate has veered sharply to the right. Trump vaulted to the top of Republican polls in June after he suggested that most Mexican immigrants are “rapists,” “drug dealers” and “killers,” and promised to deport all 11 million illegal immigrants and erect a wall to keep them out.

Obama, meanwhile, has tried to make the case that new immigrants are an essential part of the American story. In December, the president presided over a naturalization ceremony at the National Archives for immigrants from 25 countries.

“In these new Americans we see our own American stories — our parents, our grandparents, our aunts, our uncles, our cousins,” Obama said. “. . . They set out for a place that was more than just a piece of land, but an idea: America — a place where we can be a part of something bigger.”

The December address did not resonate much amid the clamor of an increasingly loud, divisive and angry presidential campaign. The State of the Union gives Obama a chance to command a much bigger audience on what aides called “the grandest stage in all of American politics.”

In the days after his speech, the president will travel deep into the Republican heartland. In Omaha and then in Baton Rouge, he plans to continue to make his case, betting that in even the reddest of states, he will find people who are willing to listen.

COMMENTS

Obama Speechwriter: Obama Plagiarized Bush's 2007 SOTU FNC (1.28.2014)

OBAMA ONE SICK B@ST@RD. Hates Bush but stole his speech... WTF ???? If you are a liberal and support this jackass of a fool then you are one of the same. 

Speechwriter: Obama Plagiarized Bush's 2007 SOTU FNC (1.28.2014)