In President Obama’s recent State of the Union address, he explicitly chose to not descend into the minutia of a series of budgetary suggestions, instead deciding to weave a narrative of a successful United States – through a focus on economics. He framed his speech around a story of a middle-class, “strong, tight-knit family who has made it through some very, very hard times,” insisting that that story is the nation’s story as well. The family’s story, the President argued, is an example of the success of his “middle-class economics:” “the idea that this country does best when everyone gets their fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.” Economics, for Obama, is the measure of the country’s success. And so he offered statistics regarding the U.S. economy’s growth and the decreasing unemployment rate (currently 5.6%): U.S. businesses have created over 11 million new jobs over the last five years and “the typical family” is expected to save $750 on gas this year. But he also looked to the future, when two-thirds of jobs will require higher education. And, because the majority of people can’t afford this necessary education, he proposed offering community college, the choice of 40% of college students, free of charge, funded by the federal government. Also aimed at improving residents’ economic stability, he urged an increase in the capital gains tax, and a corresponding decrease in middle class income taxes.
His discussion of social issues was derived from his focus on economic advancement and advantage; he didn’t forward social issues for their own sake. This is regrettable, but perhaps appropriate for a speech focused on economics. He positioned the gender pay gap as an economic issue first. “Nothing helps families make ends meet like higher wages. That’s why this Congress still needs to pass a law that [eliminates the pay gap].” It was only a social issue secondarily in this speech: “It’s 2015. It’s time.” About childcare he said, “It’s time we stop treating childcare as a side issue, or a women’s issue, and treat it like the national economic priority that it is for all of us.” I suspect that he emphasized the economic repercussions of these unresolved issues because a measure of economic success is something we all need in a capitalist system, and so something that we can all agree upon. The same can not be said of our social values.
When not justifying them by economic means, Obama discussed them in regards to partisanship (which, incidentally, was in evidence throughout his speech: Joe Biden rose at multiple points, whereas John Boehner often did not; the same was true of the assembly as a whole, which often applauded, or not, along party lines). Sometimes the president justified social issues by drawing from both economics and partisanship. He argued that his policy of middle-class economics works, “as long as politics don’t get in the way.” He reminded his fellow politicians that “the job of government” is not to “relieve every hardship.” It is to make “laws that strengthen rather than weaken unions, and … [to] make a meaningful difference in the lives of millions of families.” It is to “better reflect America’s hopes.” He offered historical context from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for this job description, saying, “At every moment of economic change throughout our history, this country has taken bold action to adapt to new circumstances,” ensuring that everyone has a chance to be successful.
He called for “a better politics” – which doesn’t involve one side giving up its agenda, but rather involves “[appealing] to each other’s basic decency instead of our basest fears,” where debates don’t serve to “[demonize] each other” but rather to discover common ground. He insisted that bipartisan support exists for initiatives: “Surely we can all see,” the President said, “that it’s possible to shape a law that upholds our tradition as a nation of laws. … Surely we can agree it’s a good thing that for the first time in 40 years, the crime rate and the incarceration rate have come down together, and use that as a starting point … to reform America’s criminal justice system so that it protects and serves all of us.”
Obama used historical evidence to strengthen his arguments; and his insistence that we need to uphold civil liberties and “see our differences as a great gift” because “[everyone’s] life matters. Framing his speech at the beginning of something, “fifteen years into this new century,” he used the past to talk about his view for the future. This view will not be accomplished in the next two years of his presidency. It is a view that looks toward 2016, a post-Obama campaign. It is a view that looks beyond even that. “We [are] … freer,” Obama claimed, “to write our own future than any other nation on Earth.” What do we want that to look like? Who do we want to be? •
