Obama Starts Reelection with State of the Union

As is wont to happen in an election year, President Barack Obama used last night’s State of the Union address to articulate new campaign promises, tout successes of his first term, and spin failures into palatable stepping stones on the road to improvement. Members of Congress remained polite throughout, perhaps uncharacteristically cognizant of how much Americans have grown to detest their vitriol and incompetence. Some of last year’s bipartisan decency was on display, likely attributable to the presence of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, making her last public appearance before resigning to continue recovering from last January’s Tucson shootings.

As for the speech itself, the president proposed a wide range of new initiatives, nearly all of which have no chance of becoming law even by the most optimistic of predictions. He encouraged passage of the Dream Act, mandatory schooling until age 18, eliminating tax code loopholes, taxing offshore profits of multinational corporations, pursuing an “all of the above” energy policy, and passing a payroll tax cut. Of the aforementioned, the latter two could potentially see major progress in the coming year. True to the partisan warrior he has become, Obama vowed to fight obstructionism against his agenda, which many Republicans interpreted as an unwillingness to listen to opposing views and to compromise.