The State Of The Union (SOTU) Address.

Last night (28/1/14) US President Barack Obama gave the 2014 State of the Union address. The purpose of this speech is to allow the President to outline the achievements of the past year and lay out their objectives for the coming year.

That first task presented Obama with something of a problem because to be frank he didn't achieve anything in 2013. There was of course the disastrous roll-out of Obamacare but the Affordable Care Act was actually passed way back in 2010. So that is really more of a story about how Obama managed to screw up one of his few achievements. In order to compensate Obama instead decided to talk about the achievements of everyday Americans. This of course gave the speech the unfortunate theme of; "America's a great country, it's just a shame about the President."

In order to give the impression of accomplishment Obama instead chose to focus on foreign policy in the hope that the average voter wouldn't know enough about these complex and far away issues to pick up on the holes in Obama's argument. For example Obama claimed that the operation to remove Syria's chemical weapons was the result of "American diplomacy backed by the threat of force." In fact the plan to remove Syria's chemical weapons is a Russian one and therefore the result of Russian diplomacy. Further more the Russians seem to have put the plan together in order to punish America for its provocation through, primarily, the Rihanna operation. That is why the US is now having to destroy Syria's chemical weapons at sea because every nation it asked to help responded by saying something along the lines of; "We know you don't understand why you shouldn't be doing this but we're going to do you a favour by refusing to help you in order to slow the process down."

In fact the reason why the US is insisting that the Geneva II talks between the Syrian government and who the US likes to pretend represents the Syrian opposition take place during the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Grammys, the State of the Union and the Superbowl is so it can place pressure on all delegates in the hope of working out what on earth is actually going on. As always this plan is fatally flawed because more militant backers of the conflict in Syria are intent on using the talks to identify the Syrian governments weaknesses in order to overthrow them more quickly. With the US still not up to speed with the conflict any attempt to speed things up further is only likely to put the US in an even worse position should the Syrian government fall.

Obama also went onto claim that "American diplomacy... backed by pressure" has halted Iran's nuclear program. Here Obama has more of a point because it was the economic pressure of Obama's sanctions that brought Iran to the negotiating table. However those sanctions have also harmed America and the global economy by reducing the amount of oil available on the global market driving up the oil price and increasing the strategic power of the Gulf Monarchies such as Saudi Arabia. As such it is unclear why halting Iran's nuclear program is a strategic objective of the US because the whole thing seems to be strengthening Saudi Arabia at the US' expense. Therefore rather then highlighting the strengh of US power the Iran deal seems to underline the US' place as a declining world power and its subservience to nations such as Saudi Arabia.

With successes from 2013 in short supply Obama dedicated most of the speech to laying out a laundry list of policies he hopes to implement in 2014. These were all highly populist and seemed dedicated to ensuring a Democratic victory at November's mid-term election.

Some of the policies were extremely basic. For example the centrepiece policy of raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour (Herman Cain anyone?) is simply a bribe; "Vote Democrat, we'll give you money!!" Likewise after 13 years of war very few people are going to campaign on the fact that the US needs to send more of its young men and women off to get killed and maimed in Afghanistan. The gamble that Obama is taking is that most American voters will not understand the complicated reasons why this surrender will reduce the US' diplomatic standing and therefore economic power in the world. Plus it will be at least 2017 before terrorists will again be able to use Afghanistan as a base to launch large scale attacks against US targets.

A lot of the policies though were more sophisticated not only designed to ensure Democratic success but also limit the Republicans ability to compete. For example Obama made a concerted effort to portray himself as a champion of women to the point where in the opening part of his speech you began to doubt if there were any men left in the US at all. Through their - I think - unusual and often poorly communicated stance on abortion and contraception the Republicans have made it far too easy for the Democrats to portray them as waging something of a war against women. So by portraying his policies as being designed to help women every time the Republican Congress blocks them it re-enforces that idea. Of course Obama is hoping that the average voter is too stupid to notice that despite all his nice words Obama - through his actions in the Rihanna operation - has spent most of 2013 insisting that women should only exist as the property of men and all forms of violence against women be it physical, sexual or psychological should not only be tolerated but should be actively applauded.

The same is true of Obama's focus on immigration reform. As I've said before Obama's proposed immigration reforms are deeply flawed and will have a significant effect on driving down US wages and living standards almost to the point that everybody is on the minimum wage. That is why large employers such as Wal-Mart so vigorously support them. Obama however supports immigration reform because he is calculating that if he can turn America's roughly 11 million illegal immigrants into legal citizens with full voting rights they, along with their friends and families, will repay the debt by voting Democrat. If the Republicans succeed in blocking the reforms in Congress then it makes them look like the nasty party in the eyes of the friends and family of illegal immigrants and could shift the entire Hispanic ethnic vote in favour of the Democrat Party. Here the Republicans seem to have already out manoeuvred the Democrats by introducing an alternative plan that would see illegal immigrants become legal immigrants but deny them citizenship and therefore voting rights. Unfortunately though that does not solve the living standards problem.

So in summary rather then gathering all of America's politicians together in one place for Obama to deliver an hour long speech the White House could have saved everyone a lot of time and bother by instead issuing a single page press release reading simply;

"In 2014 the President intends to make sure the Democrats win control of Congress regardless of the cost."


(Originally Posted) 17:40 on 29/1/14 (UK date).