Barack Obama to admit mistakes in first State of the Union address

[billynomates]

Barack Obama to admit mistakes in first State of the Union address



President Barack Obama speaks at a town hall-style meeting at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio, as part of his "White House to Main Street Tour". Seizing a chance to reconnect, Obama will use his first State of the Union address Wednesday, Jan. 26, to try to persuade the people of a frustrated nation that he is on their side, aides close to Obama say.

President Obama was expected to appeal for greater optimism in his speech

Knocked back by angry voters and constrained by a ballooning deficit, President Obama was expected to use his first State of the Union address last night to admit mistakes in presentation and plead for some of the optimism that swept him to power. It was always going to be a tall order.

Eager Democrats were reserving aisle seats in the House of Representatives by 8am to ensure they had a chance to shake Mr Obama’s hand as he made his way to the podium for his biggest speech of the year. Polls yesterday showed that three quarters of Americans believe their Government is not working and 58 per cent feel their country is heading in the wrong direction.

Against this background, White House aides said that the speech would focus “like a laser” on the economy and jobs, with no strategy expected for saving the healthcare Bill that dominated Mr Obama’s first year in office. Senator Harry Reid, who led round-the-clock talks on the Bill until the Democrats lost their Senate supermajority last week, said there was now “no rush” to get the Bill passed.

Instead, Mr Obama planned to list a series of modest initiatives to ease the burden of recession on hard-pressed middle class families. These included a $4 billion (£2.4 billion) funding increase for schools and promises of tax credits for small businesses and childcare in next week’s budget. To dampen increasing alarm over the $1.4 trillion deficit, he was also expected to announce a bipartisan commission on deficit reduction and a symbolic pay freeze for senior White House staff.
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Few of his supporters would have forecast such a shrunken agenda a year ago when Mr Obama’s sweeping promises of change still seemed equal to the challenges posed by a collapsing economy. Since then recovery has been sluggish, unemployment stuck at 10 per cent and Republican efforts to sabotage health, financial and energy legislation have been relentless.

His task last night was to gloss over a thin record of accomplishment, fire up a deeply demoralised Democratic Party and chart a course towards midterm elections in November that his rank and file are starting to dread.

At least 30 million viewers were expected to tune in for the speech. Aides said that Mr Obama would tell them he had lost none of his ambition and still planned to change the way Washington did business — but in reality he is more dependent than ever on the 535 members of Congress who crammed into the House last night.

[billynomates]

Whats happened to the 'YES WE CAN!'?

[LadyWrestler]

If they are expecting me to tune in, there will be 29,999,999 viewers instead of 30,000,000.

[bluffmanxx]

it will be interesting to see if we get a realistic asessment of the state of the union, or another well written, well delivered campaign speech.

[all4pearljam]

Just flipped by the SOTU address, and it always makes me laugh - whenever the President says something 'clap-worthy' his party always stands and applauds, and the other party just sits on their hands. It's like High School, except these are the people running this country...

[bluffmanxx]

i think obama just went all in with a gutshot shraight draw. not a wise move imo calling for more stimulus, pushing harder on health care and not giving up on cap and trade and assorted green jobs BS. i've got a feeling he will be on the rail pretty damn soon, all the while wondering what went wrong.

[WinJStar]

I Obama.

[skyguy2007]

^^^Because he's tall and wears a size 16 shoe?

[Niccivan]

i think obama just went all in with a gutshot shraight draw. not a wise move imo calling for more stimulus, pushing harder on health care and not giving up on cap and trade and assorted green jobs BS. i've got a feeling he will be on the rail pretty damn soon, all the while wondering what went wrong.

I'm just in disbelief, with all that is going on, how he still has so many supporters. Do those people not look at what's going on around them?? How can they be so blind?? We already know what went wrong.... it will be those who are still blind that will be wondering.

[spaceboy761]

Obama is paying the price for the worst Congress we've had in 25 years. Hopefully, this Massachsetts election was a blessing in disguise since it certainly beat getting the bad news in the form of a midterm election. I think he got the message that the only thing Americans care about right now is job creation. Everything else will have to wait.