The Mystic Chords of Memory--The Challenge for the State of the Union

President Obama faces a different political environment for his 2011 State of the Union Address. And I don't mean a Republican-controlled House. Party identification in the United States has moved to 32% Democrats, 30% Republicans and 38% Independents. It is a fact the GOP will ignore this year but Obama should exploit. President Obama's approval rating has remained consistent for a year from 51% on January, 2010, to 49% in June 2010 and now 50% in January 2011--that's some 15 points higher than Ronald Reagan at his mid-point during the recession in 1980s. More importantly,Opinion Research has found that 73% of Americans approve of Obama as a person and 2/3rds want him to succeed this year.

Speaking to the Christian Science Monitor editorial board, Howard Dean analyzed the Tea Party phenomenon. He said it was the last great reaction by a generation who grew up without diversity. He said they would play a role in the 2012 election.He said that everyday they see President Obama they are reminded that their America is gone. He broke the tea party down into three components: the racist, which are covered by the media; the corporate tea party types like Dick Armey; and the populist tea party. He claimed the latter want to support the President.

On the Democratic side, misanthropic Mark Penn reminded President Obama he had to win back the suburban professionals who were drifting away from the Democrats because of a perceived liberal agenda. Penn actually made good points that the college-educated professional class has been one of the most significant demographic for Democratic victories starting in 2006 and must be reassured by the President so they remain in the party.

While the noise in Washington is about the clash between a conservative agenda and the President's,the wider question is about the unease Americans have about the future. Poll after poll show that for the first time Americans believe their children will have a lower standard of living than themselves and that Americans believe the country is in decline. Much of this is due to the severe hangover 2008 and 2009 created by taking us to the brink of extinction. But also it is marked by growing concern that China, which is economically and militarily much weaker than the United States at the moment, will soon surpass us as the global superpower. From the Right you hear this phrased as President Obama as being the post-America President.

The President lost some of his mojo last year because of the minutia of the legislative battles and his failure to frame these victories into a larger vision. His own brand was tarnished not because of compromise or failing to fulfill his campaign promises. Instead, I believe his massive accomplishments and his desire to actually govern overwhelmed people so much so that they felt change was actually happening much faster than they could absorb. And they felt threatened. And this spurred the reaction fueled by the massive disinformation campaign of the Right.

I've always said that President Obama was a radical moderate and now he has a massive opening to act in that way--to re-establish the Vital Center as Arthur Schlesinger once wrote. It's a fair bet that the American people really do want a more equal country,sound public schools, good health care and job opportunities. Poll after poll before and after the mid-term shows that the American people did not buy into the Republican agenda even though they voted for them. President Obama has to outline his vision of the future of the country and set some goals that people can identify with.

It's simply not good enough to say we will be generating jobs to get out of this deep hole, as Paul Krugman describes it, and that certain measures will be taken to lower the national debt. This obscures the deeper problem--the American quest for meaning and national identity. This is what President Obama has to address--the American myth about itself.

All the resurgent talk this year about American exceptionalism is a symptom of the problem. America is battered economically, is over-extended militarily, and lagging behind in scientic development and technology. And the American people can not articulate it but they feel it. And add to this the demographic shifts in America where whites are soon just to become the largest minority, not the majority, then it's natural Americans will retreat to their safe harbors of prejudice and xenophobia.

If the economic crisis started with the Clinton and George W administrations as Robert Scheer maintains, then the drift in the American identity started then also. Ameica never adjusted its self-perception after the end of the Cold War. Instead, there was this strange fugue where Democrats and Republicans alike maintained that we were the indispensable country, the sole superpower, and eventually under George W deteriorated to calling ourselves the "American empire". We became the nation of hubris and conceit.

Now we find that fear is prevalent on the land. We should fear Iran, which has a defense budget of $5 billion. We should fear 500-1,000 Islamic terrorists. We should fear being overtaken by China. We should fear a resurgent Russia under another term by Putin. We should fear Hispanic immigration. We should fear Muslim Americans. We should fear the Gay. We should fear turning into Western Europe.

Americans have always had a healthy skepticism toward their own government. But this has turned into a full-blown paranoia after a generation of being told that government is the problem, not the solution. The Republicans have abandoned any pretense of supporting government institutions at all. Their own ideological plans call for gutting all government programs that benefit any American--they have become colorblind. The only proper function of government is to have a massive military capacity to defend ourselves from virtually all imagined or real threats. But frequent polling of American attitudes toward government functions reject this minimalist approach.

An entrepeneur and venture capitalist writing in Huffington Post the other day said that if the United States were a business, he would not invest in it. He pointed to the lack of any plans for our economic future and the lack of any plan to deal with our national debt. This is the viewpoint from a more enlightened member of the financial elite. Responsible corporate leaders do not believe it is good business for Americans to have structural unemployment, lack of education and healthcare. Even anti-semite Henry Ford knew better.

President Obama obviously loves the act of governing and creating policies. He is excellent at it. But he has to bring back the inspiring speaker of old to give the country a spiritual LIFT. This State of the Union is the only chance he has until the end of the term to lay out his vision of America's future in inspiring words that strike those mystic chords of memory. Strangely, he can present a pragmatic vision of government that will sound fresh and exciting given the political noise in the atmosphere now. If all you hear is right-wing radio and read left-wing blogs, a practical moderate vision of government will sound immediately reasonable. This would not mean triangulation as pundits say but simply driving the car down the middle of the road.

Progressives should have been pleased by the first two years, even though they are not. What you got then is basically all you're going to get, except for another Supreme Court justice. President Obama wisely front-loaded all his most ambitious goals in the first year and a half of his term. Liberals should be assured that even though President Obama is non-ideological he shares their view of social justice and civil rights. That adds the spice to his moderation.

Democrats worry that President Obama has boxed himself in because he agreed to the tax breaks for the rich and then it will be an election issue in 2012. The vast majority of Americans side with President Obama on wanting these tax cuts to expire and the President didn't retract his opinions. But that's not the issue. The issue is that there has to be tax reform--both individual and corporate--and this is what is going to get President Obama out of the imaginary box.

Democrats also worry that President Obama after the mid-terms will sell out on Social Security. Here again,the noise around the Catfood Commission's recommendations was deceptive. Both Bowles and Simpson wrote very clearly how important social security was to the nation and that the rise in the retirement age would take place decades from now--not as immediate as progressives proclaimed. Likewise, they urged the end of the FICA income cap. President Obama repeatedly said that all Social Security need was "tweaking". But no one listened.

But all this is besides the large psychological issue of restoring the morale of the American people and to paint an optimistic myth or fantasy, which will inspire people. We all remember the fate of Jimmy Carter when he went all protestant on us and tried to remind Americans about their malaise, although he never said the word. President Obama needs to exude an unhealthy optimism. Whenever he has spoken about this over the last year and a half it hasn't carried. It seems he is walking through his lines of encouragement.

Lawrence Kudlow is all optimistic (heaven, help us)because he heard through the Wall Street grapevine that President Obama is going to call for the elimination of various corporate taxes. Of course, Kudlow wants all corporate tax reforms to be revenue-neutral. But I believe President Obama will call for the reform of the corporate tax code because it is too unwieldy.

But this time President Obama has to specify what he wants or does not want in any major legislative battles. During the Lame Duck session, he did just that and his success rate was extraordinary and his approval ratings soared, especially among independents.

One of the President Obama's perceived liabilities (I think strengths) is that he doesn't act as the Alpha Male and declared he is the decider. Instead, he actually thinks about what he's doing. The older American population likes the authoritarian male model who enunciates firm convictions, even if it means walking off to a trillion dollar war on phoney intelligence and allowing the global economy to collapse in the name of free markets . But President Obama does have to act more firmly especially during a period of provocations from the House Republicans. But I don't think he could even fake the phony white male authoritarianism.

The State of the Union will come after we have been treated to three weeks of Republican overreach. Already their pledge to cut $100 billion has shrunk to $30 billion and they are getting shaky about this. By the time of the President's speech, he will have the benefit of an America thirsting for words from someone who knows what he is doing. He remains the only adult in town. If Congressional approval ratings were in the basement when they actually accomplished something, wait for the response to this crowd.

The actual State of the Union speech has to weave American myth with concrete proposals. I believe Obama is going to get out ahead of the Republicans on the debt issue by proposing a serious of things that actually will decrease the national debt. Remember he has been studying this issue since he took office and put Paul Volcker in charge of his private debt commission. Volcker has announced he's leaving and I suggest it's because his work is done. I also believe he will make a pitch for more infrastructure spending, which in prior years and centuries received bipartisan support. And he will announce initiatives to reform the tax code using fairly Reaganesque language. I believe he should appoint Alice Rivlin to revise the tax codes. He will also bring the country up to date on Afghanistan saying he is adding more Marines and having a surge this Spring but will outline the departure date. I expect he will announce cuts in government programs that will exceed the Republicans but they will be done smartly. He's just going to take away all their talking points except their condemnation of his health care plan.

The content of his speech will be reassuring to moderates, independents, and the private sector. It will provoke condemnation from the Right just because of who he is. It will split the Republican leadership between those who want to play tea party and those who want to be adults and wheel and deal. Remember tea parties are for little girls with imaginary friends. Progressives and the labor movement will be concerned about entitlement reform and raise the perpetual questions about whether President Obama will cave to the Republicans.

President Obama should not look to President Clinton for examples of States of the Union. The "Bridge to the 21st Century" ended up sounding like the 1964 World's Fair. Obama has to ground his language in the archaic political language of America's past. He has to take the nostalgia away from the Tea Party. I'm sorry Ted Sorenson died because he would have been an excellent wordsmith in taking past language and updating it for a future vision.

We will be treated to the usual hyperbolic build-up. Can the Black Man juggle eight balls at a time? Can President Obama meet the challenge? If President Obama fails, his presidency is doomed. Can he dunk? Will he shake hands with John Boehner?

Politically he will manage just fine and leave the podium in good shape. But will he leave behind the seeds of a vision?