President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union Address is over, which means partisans on each side can cherry pick the parts that they will brand as genius, naive, unifying, divisive, opportunistic, valient, bipartisan, partisan, boring or fascinating, one for the ages or one for the dustbin. It all depends on a person’s filter, party affiliation, or what candidate they are supporting.
If you don’t want to learn about what he said through the filter of someone’s politics or preferences, you can read the FULL TEXT OF THE SPEECH HERE.
Here’s an extensive roundup of media, weblog, and Twitter reaction from a wide variety of viewpoints.
In his final State of the Union address, President Obama outlined his vision for the future of the country, touting his accomplishments during his two terms in office and asking to “fix our politics.”
“For my final address to this chamber, I don’t want to just talk about the next year. I want to focus on the next five years, the next ten years, and beyond. I want to focus on our future,” he said.
“The future we want, all of us want –- opportunity and security for our families; a rising standard of living and a sustainable, peaceful planet for our kids –- all that is within our reach. But it will only happen if we work together. It will only happen if we can have rational, constructive debates,” he said. “It will only happen if we fix our politics.”
The president’s final State of the Union comes as much of the political world focuses on this year’s presidential election. Though he made no direct reference to specific candidates, Obama alluded to what some would call the divisive rhetoric used by Republicans on the campaign trail, warning of “voices urging us to fall back into our respective 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.”
“We need to reject any politics, any politics that targets people because of race or religion. Let me just say this: This is not matter of political correctness. It’s a matter of understanding just what it is that makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith,” he said.
The president also challenged those who say America’s standing in the world has diminished.
“The talk of America’s economic decline is political hot air,” he said. “Well, so is all the rhetoric you hear about our enemies getting stronger and America getting weaker. Let me tell you something: the United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. Period. It’s not even close.”
The Huffington Post offered this fascinating glimpse into the moments right after his final speech:
Even though he’s the leader of the free world, President Barack Obama isn’t above a bit of nostalgia.
Just before he exited the House chamber after delivering his address, he paused one final time, turned to face the House floor and said that he wanted to take the scene in.
“Let me look at this thing one last time, I always like to take it in,” he said. “It’s kinda cool.”
President Obama used his final State of the Union address to consider himself as an ex-president — talking in conversational, contemplative and backward-looking terms at the country he would leave behind, and warning not-very-subtly that the country shouldn’t pick Donald Trump to take his place.
“As frustration [with politics] 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,” Obama said, one of several moments when he seemed to be referencing the Republican front-runner’s suspicious attitude toward immigrants and Muslims. “We can’t afford to go down that path. It won’t deliver the economy we want, or the security we want, but most of all, it contradicts everything that makes us the envy of the world.”
[Fact checks, reactions and more on the live blog]
Obama’s speech came with more than a year – a full one-eighth of his term – still remaining in the White House. But he seemed to be already thinking of what the place would look like without him, and trying to balance confidence in his achievements (“ Ask Osama bin Laden,” he said at one point, touting his anti-terror credentials) with acknowledgements that many Americans didn’t feel as good about the Obama era as he did.
“I believe in you,” Obama said, as he closed. “That’s why I stand here confident that the State of our Union is strong.”
When President Obama delivered his last State of the Union address Tuesday evening, there was an implicit sense that he had given up working with Congress in his final year in office — and instead was trying to shape the nature of the 2016 presidential race with obvious jabs at Republican contenders Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Chris Christie.
Obama’s message was one that was built for optimism, in contrast to the doom and gloom of Trump and Co. “The country we love [is] clear-eyed. Big-hearted. Optimistic,” the president concluded his speech. “A year from now, when I no longer hold office, I’ll be right there with you as a citizen — inspired by those voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness.”
Seemingly exasperated by two terms in office, Obama didn’t propose any large legislative initiatives that would reshape American life. Instead, he ticked off a couple things that bipartisan support might be built on — prescription drug addiction and criminal justice reform — and left it at that.
The president spent a large section of his State of the Union speech pushing back at the Republican field that is jockeying to replace him in the White House in just over a year….
….Obama had come to office running on the theme of hope and change — his soaring rhetoric inspired many of his supporters to back him over Hillary Clinton, and then to beat John McCain in the general election. After seven years, the president tried to return to this theme, echoing his victory speech on that election night in 2008, urging the public see themselves “not first and foremost as black or white or Asian or Latino, not as gay or straight, immigrant or native born; nor as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans first, bound by a common creed.”
But what appeared Tuesday evening was a humbled Obama, who acknowledged that “rancor and suspicion” had worsened during his time in office — rather than the healing that the president had come to the White House seeking. The president even suggested that other presidents, such as FDR or Lincoln, might have done to bridge this gap if they had been given the opportunity.
Think Progress saw four things missing from Obama’s address. Go to the link to read them all in full. Here’s a list with a tiny taste.
Gun Violence
Despite just having issued a major, controversial executive order to address gun violence, the issue appeared in the State of the Union only as a sentence fragment: “Protecting our kids from gun violence.”Immigration
…Over the course of his presidency, Barack Obama has seen a bill for comprehensive immigration reform stall in Congress while Republican governors have sued to block some of his executive actions that protect millions of immigrants from deportation. Yet this year’s State of the Union speech also included just a single sentence fragment calling for “fixing a broken immigration system.”
Black Lives Matter
Although one of the founders of the influential activist movement sat in the House chamber during the speech, Obama did not mention the Black Lives Matter movement or its goal to reduce the massive number of black men and women killed by American police,
Reproductive Rights…While President Obama has vowed to veto any legislation that defunds Planned Parenthood, he made no mention of reproductive rights during Tuesday’s address. This silence is particularly striking considering that a Supreme Court decision this year could determine the fate of contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act and abortion rights are under attack in statehouses across the country, with nearly 400 bills to restrict access to abortion introduced last year alone.
Americans were alarmed and even outraged today when the Pentagon reported Iran had detained 10 American sailors who were traveling between Kuwait and Bahrain. The two U.S. Navy ships, it appears, had run aground and sailed into Iranian territory.
Many details are still unavailable and Americans expected President Obama to give them an update on the situation at tonight’s State of the Union. However, he decided to stick to his pre-planned script. All the public had in the way of comfort was White House Communications Director Jen Psaki declaring on CNN that the sailors were safe.
The New York Times’ Peter Baker:
Over the course of 48 hours, Americans will confront two starkly disparate views of Barack Obama’s America that will frame the debate over the future of the country in this election year and beyond.
The country described by the president on Tuesday night in his final State of the Union address is the most powerful nation on earth and on the rise again, with more jobs, better health care and stunning innovation. Although grappling with serious challenges, it is poised for greater progress.
By contrast, the country that Republican presidential candidates will depict on Thursday night in their next nationally televised debate is a darker place, a once-great power that has lost ground in a dangerous world, surrendered its authority and leadership with allies and enemies alike, and diminished freedom and opportunity at home.
Whichever view ultimately seems more credible to the public will help determine who succeeds Mr. Obama next January and sets the nation’s course for the following four years. For months, Republicans led by Donald J. Trump have tapped into a deep river of discontent in the electorate, and Mr. Obama decided to use the most prominent platform in American politics to push back.
“Tonight was President Obama’s morning-in-America response to the malaise speech that the Republican candidates have been delivering for the last year,” said Jon Favreau, the president’s former chief speechwriter. “From Reagan to Clinton and Obama, people have never elected a pessimistic president who talks about America like it’s a ‘Mad Max’ movie.”But Republicans said Mr. Obama would have a hard time convincing the public with a rosy picture that conflicts with their own perceptions and experiences. Iran’s detention of 10 American sailors from two Navy patrol boats in the Persian Gulf just hours before the president’s address provided timely ammunition for the Republican case that his diplomacy with Tehran has been misplaced and has undercut American power.
“Americans wake up every day to more bad news with a world in constant crisis,” said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focused on national security. “American leadership is in decline while the world is in full meltdown with Iranian mullahs, Russian dictators and radical Islamists on the ascent. No State of the Union address, no matter how eloquent, can explain away that harsh reality.”
Republicans are not the only ones who see a glass half empty. Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist who has mounted a populist challenge to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, has drawn huge crowds describing a country dominated by well-heeled Wall Street plutocrats profiting off workers who have increasingly lost ground.
Such negativity from the right and left has exasperated Mr. Obama, who has gotten less credit than aides say he deserves for the progress of the last seven years. The only regret he acknowledged was failed promise to change the tone of Washington. Beyond that, he used the speech to try to refute gloomy Republican assessments.
For his seven years as president, Barack Obama has mounted an ideological war against the Republicans. He hasn’t cast it as such, and, most times, he has not matched his rhetoric with the fury of the fight. Still, this battle has raged on, as Obama has contended that communal action spearheaded by government activism is critical for repairing the economy ruined by the Bush-Cheney crash and rejiggering it so middle-class and low-income Americans can survive, and perhaps even thrive, when confronted by the mighty challenges of the 21st century. Obstructionist Republicans, naturally, have argued that government is the problem and that the old Reaganish medley of tax cuts, social welfare program shrinkage, government downsizing, union-bashing, and regulation rollbacks is the path to prosperity. (At the same time, Obama has waged a parallel fight on national security, contending that multilateral action coupled with patient and aggressive diplomacy is a better bet than neocon hawkishness dependent on bellicose threats and the go-it-alone use of force.) In presidential speeches—State of the Union addresses, budget speeches, or on-the-road appearances—and during the 2012 campaign, Obama has repeatedly made his case: progressive-minded government is needed and delivers in this era of change and economic insecurity. And in his final State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, Obama did extend this crusade, though, for good or bad, it was not his central theme.
Instead, an upbeat Obama offered a sweeping vision of the nation’s future—and tried to present a picture of an American society tapping its dynamic, can-do spirit to accomplish great things in the years ahead, if it can get its political act together.
Obama did recognize the deep divide in the political universe. Noting that it’s been difficult to find bipartisan agreement in many areas these past seven years, he cited the issue of “what role the government should play in making sure the system’s not rigged in favor of the wealthiest and biggest corporations.” And he continued: “here, the American people have a choice to make.” He explained why the GOP way is bunk:
President Barack Obama can cross off his final State of the Union address (full text) off his bucket list. How to measure the disappointment of this last performance, which so neatly mirrors the disappointment of his time in office.
He promised a short speech but then droned on for what seemed like a hell of a long time. He said he wouldn’t give a laundry list and instead just sort of dumped laundry on the table. There were feints toward the sort of optimism—the hope and change—that energized his original victory, but nobody in or out of the Capitol was energized by it.
“We live in a time of extraordinary change?—?change that’s reshaping the way we live, the way we work, our planet and our place in the world. It’s change that promises amazing medical breakthroughs, but also economic disruptions that strain working families. It promises education for girls in the most remote villages, but also connects terrorists plotting an ocean away. It’s change that can broaden opportunity, or widen inequality. And whether we like it or not, the pace of this change will only accelerate.”
Thanks for the news, Mr. President, and the balanced view of good and bad. But really, what have you done to make America a freer, better, more prosperous place? Mass surveillance of citizens (including a secret kill list)? Layering on huge new sets of regulations and bureaucracies? I’m just not seeing it.
In his final State of the Union address, President Barack Obama was widely expected to talk less about specific plans and more about broad goals for the future — projects that will continue long after he’s left office. It turns out that was true almost to a fault. The address downplayed the problems we’re still facing in favor of lots of hope and relatively little concrete change, touching on cancer research, a better social safety net, and fixing global warming. The present is bright, Obama promised, and the future will be moderately more bright.
Obama’s presidency has been a mixed bag for technology policy, from a continued stalemate over cybersecurity and encryption to a robust promotion of net neutrality. The same was true for his State of the Union address. The speech alluded to having “protected an open internet,” but it also asked Congress to pass the far more controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership, whose intellectual property rules could threaten that same openness.
We got a much more nebulous discussion of what lies ahead, including the way that new technology is changing how we work and live. “Today, technology doesn’t just replace jobs on the assembly line, but any job where work can be automated,” said Obama. “Companies in a global economy can locate anywhere, and face tougher competition.” Obama has talked up emerging industries like 3D printing in previous addresses, but here, progress was painted in the absolute broadest and most recognizable strokes.
Roger Simon has a must read in The Politico. Here’s part of it:
Barack Obama really does not have it so bad. He gets $400,000 a year in salary, $50,000 in expenses, a fleet of planes, a car and driver, and almost all the golf he can stand.
In other words, the president’s life is almost as good as Donald Trump’s.With one major exception: President Obama feels actual remorse. And considerable responsibility. And Trump may never have felt either.
In his last State of the Union speech Tuesday night, President Obama spoke of something presidents rarely speak of at such moments: regret.
Pointing out how “our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get attention,” Obama said, “most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn’t matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some narrow interest.”
He went on: “It’s one of the few regrets of my presidency: that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better.”
And who is to blame, according to Obama?
Obama is to blame. At least a little.“There’s no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide,” Obama said, “and I guarantee I’ll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office.”
But he won’t hold the office for very much longer: only a little more than a year. And Obama said that if things are going to improve, somebody else needs to bear some blame around here: me and you.Which made it an unusual political speech. If there is one rule of politics, one unbreakable commandment, it is this: Thou shalt never blame the voters.
The voters are holy. They can do no wrong. Or, rather, they can be blamed for no wrong. Because if you blame them, they may not vote for your party. And we couldn’t have that, could we?
Yes, we could, said Obama. Because our political spite and meanness have gotten out of control. And that must stop.
Pajamas Media’s Stephen Green aka Vodka Pundit did some of his famous “drunkblogging”. It is extensive but here’s his final entry:
I can sum this one up quickly.
This was Obama’s Al Bundy speech, the lowly shoe salesman desperately trying to get everyone to remember that time he scored four touchdowns in one game.
Er, that is President Obama wanted us to forget most of the last seven years he’s actually been President, and instead remember that time Candidate Obama gave those big speeches everybody loved.
I’d say even by that modest measure, tonight’s speech was worthy of an Al Bundy nap.
A CROSS SECTION OF TWEETS:
Here’s Paul Ryan trying reeeeally hard not to laugh at one of Obama’s jokes pic.twitter.com/gqekuYJ1BF
— GQ Magazine (@GQMagazine) January 13, 2016
Barack Obama, thank you. I was proud of you 8 years ago & I’m still proud of you now. May the next chapter of your life be just as amazing.
— John F. Hennessy (@CREATIVE_GOLD) January 13, 2016
Haley faults Obama, warns GOP in Republican rebuttal https://t.co/QvudnBFORC pic.twitter.com/Mfz1Xoskd3
— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) January 13, 2016
WATCH: Obama asks for “one last look” before leaving House chamber after final #SOTU speech https://t.co/BN07i8fn5u pic.twitter.com/8gd9LmUeDq
— The Hill (@thehill) January 13, 2016
How Obama used his final State of the Union to discredit Trump https://t.co/db7R6wr7sy
— TIME.com (@TIME) January 13, 2016
#BREAKING #Arizona @SenJohnMcCain calls @BarackObama‘s take on world ‘almost delusional’ https://t.co/mfur4lzL0H
— azcentral (@azcentral) January 13, 2016
Dems will have Obama campaigning in Nov, GOP will have…..W? https://t.co/BUmQHKBUuC
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) January 13, 2016
An empty seat next to Michelle Obama at the #SOTU represented victims of gun violence https://t.co/zIibfjWCiE pic.twitter.com/L8AtsI1VlZ
— The New York Times (@nytimes) January 13, 2016
By the numbers: a breakdown of Obama’s final #SOTU https://t.co/I6HlI3HWmd pic.twitter.com/8NwLwemzQd
— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) January 13, 2016
Obama didn’t just argue with Trump. He went after Rubio and Cruz, too. https://t.co/a7lYh3qt8P pic.twitter.com/LlHnLz64vE
— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) January 13, 2016
would it hurt nbc to point out that nikki haley is a native born american and ann coulter is just a racist? https://t.co/QYR3r9cJkp @kasie
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) January 13, 2016
Obama The Political Brawler Returns, With An Eye To 2016, Casts GOP As Party Of Fear https://t.co/6BjprYOJmb pic.twitter.com/1cXWbNvaEY
— Fast Company (@FastCompany) January 13, 2016
Ann Coulter: “Trump should deport Nikki Haley.” https://t.co/VzbMS27Klx | Getty pic.twitter.com/cJGW6Ueris
— POLITICO (@politico) January 13, 2016
Nikki Haley will not be endorsing Donald Trump–that much we can conclude.
— Larry Sabato (@LarrySabato) January 13, 2016
Speaker Ryan looks as though, given the choice between listening to POTUS and having a root canal, he’d be in the dentist’s chair right now.
— Larry Sabato (@LarrySabato) January 13, 2016
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.