President Obama spoke to the nation last night in an address to a joint session of Congress. Bobby Jindal gave the GOP response. Now it's time for the Grinder's official response to both. Yawn.
Sure, it was nice to see Obama being optimistic again. Two weeks ago the guy was threatening "catastrophe" if the economic stimulus package didn't pass. This speech was more hopeful, but felt perfunctory. Maybe the most dramatic line was; "We will rebuild. We will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before."
Really, Mr. President? The United States of America, the mightiest economic engine the world has ever known, will recover from a housing bubble and bank panic? Thanks for the pep talk, sir.
We could nitpick over policy, like when Obama claimed his stimulus package passed without earmarks. Total BS. The stimulus, and the budget he'll present in a couple days, both have thousands of "earmarks" by any reasonable definition of the word.
You could also note the irony that a president whose campaign was built on opposition to the Iraqi war announced a timeline for US troop withdrawal on terms that, dare we say, look a lot like "mission accomplished." This time next year, Obama will probably become the first president in history to give a victory speech for a war he voted against.
The real news of this speech, though, is that semantic nitpicking and ironically bemused distance are about the only emotions we can muster. Obama is intensely bright and charming, but the "rock star" hype is getting old. One congressman waited eight hours on the capital floor to make sure he had a good seat, which Anderson Cooper rightfully called "kind of pathetic." Others got autographs from the President on his way out, like they were tween-age girls meeting a Jonas brother.
No matter how charismatic the politician, politics is, emphatically, not rock and roll. Politics is, basically, one guy in a suit talking about crap like financial regulatory reform and the rules governing who can bid on government contracts. There are no screaming guitars, laser-light shows, flashpots or flying pigs. The audience is not filled with drunk, hot women who occasionally bare their breasts. Not that anyone needs to see Nancy Pelosi's chest, but we digress.
To tell you the truth, last night we would rather have watched the new episode of "Scrubs" that was supposed to air. To tell you even more truth, we flipped away from the speech live and only watched later so we could catch the new episode of "Dogg After Dark."
