State of the Union must outline achievable goals

As Winston Churchill once said, “A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year and to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.” President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address was, as expected, characterized by ambitious proposals. Some of President Obama’s goals for the coming year will succeed and some will not. Hence, an accurate assessment of the president’s speech is largely based on the feasibility of the proposals outlined, and their potential to succeed.

Domestic Policies: B

As expected, a large portion of President Obama’s speech considered the widening gap between the rich and the poor and the assertion that “upward mobility has stalled.” A publication by several economists released last week argued the contrary, proposing that upward mobility, or the ability to advance in income, has not changed by a significant amount in 40 years. Upward mobility is a nice political buzzword, but facts are facts.

The correct way to frame the issue of income inequality would have been to focus less on upward mobility in a broad sense and more on a single proposal about raising the federal minimum wage. Unfortunately, there were several problems with President Obama’s mention of the minimum wage. First, it received relatively little attention compared to how popular it polls (64 percent among independent voters). Second, President Obama didn’t emphasize the need to tie it to the cost of inflation — a component that, as I argued in last week’s column, is essential for the proposal to succeed.

Additionally, the president shifted responsibility to the states and small businesses. But by acknowledging that only five states have raised their minimum wage since he called for it in last year’s State of the Union address, he revealed the extreme limitations of such a demand.

President Obama mentioned the proposal to raise the minimum wage about as often as he mentioned reducing gun violence and passing immigration reform — two proposals that have as much chance of passing as the Seattle Seahawks have of winning the Super Bowl (in my opinion, none). Even worse, President Obama spent more time touting the already-popular pre-existing condition clause than he did chastising the Republicans for trying to repeal the landmark legislation, and spent even more time doing that than he did offering hope for fixing the problems that have plagued the website’s rollout for the last six months.

Foreign Affairs: C  

The most factually dubious and misleading points in the speech came when President Obama made two War on Terror promises that the United States should be tired of hearing; first, “we will be done by the end of this year and our longest war will finally be over,” as well as a call on Congress to “lift restrictions on detainee transfers and close prison at Guantanamo Bay.”

The War in Afghanistan will not end at the conclusion of 2014 because of an agreement between the United States and the government of Afghanistan called the Bilateral Security Agreement. The BSA, which the Obama administration has pressured Afghan President Hamid Karzai to sign, will leave 12 to 14 thousand troops in Afghanistan to train the security forces. It will also allow the CIA to continue using the country as a base for drone strikes in Pakistan and the surrounding areas. It will also mean the continuation of $3 billion worth of military aid to the local security forces. It appears the longest war still has a ways to go.

For the laundry list of policies that President Obama emphasized executive action on in the face of a divided Congress, calling on that body to close Guantanamo and end restrictions on transferring detainees was misleading. The 2014 National Defense Authorization Act, the annual spending bill for the military, explicitly gives President Obama the power to take necessary steps to close the prison. First, it clarified existing transfer restrictions, which only apply to moving prisoners to the United States, and second, it renewed a ban on using funds to house the prisoners in the United States. Of the 158 detainees still at Guantanamo, 71 have been cleared for transfer. It is up to President Obama — not Congress -— to send them home.

Working with Congress: A  

President Obama deserves high praise for chiding the most unproductive Congress since World War II. Moreover, he deserves credit for solving the problem of working with Congress by vowing to go around them. From executive education reform to gun control, Obama made explicitly clear that he is both aware of Congress’ limited potential and is willing to fix it. With such great promises, however, comes great responsibility — and followers of Winston Churchill will hope that next year, President Obama will explain why they did happen, and not why they didn’t.

 

Nathaniel Haas is a sophomore majoring in political science and economics. His column, “State of the Union,” runs Thursdays.