“I stand here confident that the State of our Union is strong,” President Obama summed things up last night. To which one might have puckishly responded: Strong maybe, but what union?
The invited audience at the annual address included many human symbols of national division: culture-war conscientious objectors Kim Davis and the Little Sisters of the Poor; Jim Obergefell, victor in the Supreme Court battle that occasioned Davis’s objection; representatives from Black Lives Matter and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. There were even empty seats to show disrespect for the Second Amendment and opposition to abortion.
The president acknowledged the country’s divided state in the most interesting line of his address:
It’s one of the few regrets of my presidency—that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. There’s no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I’ll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office.Likewise, there’s no doubt our column would improve if we wrote as well as Shakespeare: We thank God for our humility.
It would have been more interesting—and shown real self-awareness—if the president had acknowledged his political talents are in some respects wanting when compared not with the universally acknowledged great presidents but with the successful presidents of his own lifetime. We’re thinking here of Reagan and Clinton, who like Obama held office during fractious (if not quite as fractious) periods under divided government. In terms of both compromising with the opposition and emerging victorious from confrontations with it, Reagan and Clinton each enjoyed considerably more success than Obama. » | James Taranto | Wednesday, January 13, 2016
