State of the Union

So that was a good one, as far as States of the Union go.

Whenever the President gives a speech like this, I always hear the same thing from people.

"That was just a bunch of fancy words. He didn't propose anything concrete."

They're right of course. Obama's speech, like every other SotU, was broad, eloquent and totally abstract.

What I fail to see is how this is a bad thing.

Think for a second -- would we really want to see a speech that gave concrete policy proposals?

The answer, of course, is no. Rhetoric is fun. Rhetoric is sexy.

Policy is boring.

While this may be a bit cynical, it's true. But even if that seems a little too Machiavellian for you, consider this: even if a President did somehow manage to make a speech with bullet points detailing how to fix the economy, how many of those points would Congress adopt?

The answer, of course, is we have no idea.

That's because a single man (or, more accurately, a single man and his legion of policy advisers and other assorted lackeys) can't and shouldn't make policy by himself. As painful as the sausage-factory that is Congress is sometimes, there's a reason why laws go through so much rigamarole before they hit the books.

These things need to be open from debate on all sides by all kinds of people. That includes Congressmen, our representatives (if they aren't too busy arguing), lobbyists, the people who work in or work for people who work in the industries (if they aren't too busy buying votes) and us (if we aren't too busy watching Jersey Shore.)

So a SotU isn't meant to be a policy laundry list. It's meant to help the President do what political scientists call agenda-setting.

Agenda-setting: n. The process by which political figures attempt to control what issues and what aspects of those issues are discussed in the court of public opinion through discussion in the news media.

(If you don't like my definition, try this scholar's.)

When the President talks about broad, sweeping issues, he's trying to use the huge podium this speech gives him to shepherd the public into talking about what issues he thinks are important.

Of course, this time around there's only one issue, and that's the economy, stupid. Democrats and Republicans and everybody who ever commented on politics ever agree that's the issue that's going to be the focus of public attention.

There, however, we get into the real agenda-setting battle. We know we need to fix the economy, but how do we do it?

Obama's answer in this speech is thus:

"Our free enterprise system is what drives innovation. But because it's not always profitable for companies to invest in basic research, throughout history our government has provided cutting-edge scientists and inventors with the support that they need."

Compare that to Paul Ryan's response to Obama's speech:

"Limited government and free enterprise have helped make America the greatest nation on earth."

For Obama, the way to fix the economy in the long-term -- to make the country competitive with other countries -- is to invest in green energy and education. For Ryan and the Republicans, it's cutting the deficit and letting the free enterprise system work it's magic.

That's the main debate we're going to see going forward. In part because of this speech, the larger agenda is set. Whose nitty-gritty agenda will end up being implemented, however, is yet to be seen.

Quote of the Day

"As God as my witness, in the commercial break just before the emotional moment, the producer got into my earpiece and he said, 'um, can you cut it down to 15 seconds so we get in this tennis result from Stuttgart?"

-Keith Olbermann, on leaving MSNBC

Hate to tell you, Keith, but most of us feel pretty much the way your producer did.

Republican Civil War

So Paul Ryan is giving the response to the State of the Union.

At least, he's giving the official response. But he ain't the only one.

Michele Bachmann, everybody's favorite Tea Party attack dog, is giving her own.

Which is almost comical, really.

For all their victories and supposed momentum, there's a well-documented and often-pontificated-upon divide in the Republican Party. How deep that divide goes and what it means for the party's chances is a big ole' unknown, no mater how many people claim to know it now.

Still, the fact that there are two responses to the State of the Union exposes some of the fracture lines between the two conservative factions.

On the one hand is Paul Ryan, a pragmatic policymaker -- the guy who proposed an austerity budget with real concrete suggestions even though he probably knew such a concept was foreign and laughable to his colleagues at the time.

On the other is Bachmann, who seems to be some kind of walking, breathing, kinda-sorta-thinking totem cut from the vague, zealous anger of the movement she represents.

This should be fun to watch.

How different will the tone, tenor, and (maybe, if we're lucky) actual policy suggestions the two speeches be? We dunno. But we can guess.

One has to assume Ryan will be more level-headed than Bachmann. If she doesn't spend half the speech saying "The American People rejected your agenda," or making general threats about the impending doom of the nation, we'll consider her speech reserved.

But what will Ryan do?

I'll be honest. I like Ryan. In a party that has not just accepted but openly embraced the label of "Party of No," in a party -- heck, a Congress -- that prefers ideological shortcuts and political sniping to making policy, Ryan stands out as one of the few that actually seems to propose hard solutions. In a political discourse mired in buzzwords and mudslinging, he speaks rationally.

I hope he speaks that way Tuesday night.

Fox News Headlines

The headline on the Fox News Web site for this inflammatory tripe read "WH trying to rewrite history?"

About the Obama Administration's decision to send an ambassador to the memorial of the Hiroshima bombing, they quote the son of the guy who dropped it saying:

"It's making the Japanese look like they're the poor people, like they didn't do
anything," he said. "They hit Pearl Harbor. They struck us. We didn't
slaughter
the Japanese -- we stopped the war."

I don't see how sending somebody to show we remember the horrible destruction
wrought by the atom bomb says "We're sorry." Although maybe it does, in the way
"We're sorry it had to come to this. We're sorry so many people had to lose
their lives. We're not apoligizing, but we're sorry that you had to endure it."

Is that so bad, years after the wounds of that war have done all the
healing they will? Isn't that human?

Yeah, they have some voices of
sanity pointing out that it's not a big deal. But those voices are lower in the
story, to give the one guy criticizing Obama the maximum voice -- even if he's
really the only one.

A study in biased writing. They should teach this
to journalism students as a "what not to do."

Bobby Jindal: Loose Cannon

This is pretty much right.

Jindal has gotten props at times during the spill for "looking like a leader." Unfortunately, that's all he's done -- looked like one. The closest thing he's come to actually doing anything is these jetties, which, as Bob here points out, few scientists outside his office approve of.

The Politics of Star Wars

I am having a hard time describing how awesome this is.

Apparently some commentators have been discussing the politics of the Old Republic and the Jedi.

I may not have said it here, but I am a recovering Star-Wars-aholic from my childhood. Now that it has collided head-on with my current fan-dom of politics, it threatens a dangerous relapse.

Damn you, Atlantic Wire, damn you...

Ignorance Inc.

It really is sad that people who have this kind of voice can get away with saying stuff like this. And this . And this. (wherin Glenn Beck makes his own chief researcher out to be an idiot. Although, granted, whoever gather's Beck's facts, probably is.)

If the importance/influence of the tea party (and the leeches like Beck that have latched onto it) weren't so grossly inflated by national media, this would make the FIHB plummet. Still, it's going to drop a little bit.