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State of the Union History, Firsts, and Trivia
Tweet Share on Facebook February 12, 2013 CommentState of the Union addresses were not always the full-flowered pomp-and-circumstance affairs we see on television these days. In fact they weren't always addresses and even when they were, they weren't necessarily referred to as the "State of the Union" addresses. Confused? Read on for State of the Union trivia, history, and firsts.
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Obama's Speechwriters and Writing the State of the Union
Tweet Share on Facebook February 12, 2013 CommentCody Keenan, President Obama's incoming chief speechwriter, is getting some well deserved attention this week as tonight's State of the Union is his first gig as top pen in the president's proverbial desk. Who helps the president write his speech is a big deal, especially in the modern communications age. But even as the president's speechwriters have come out from behind the curtain, there remain some misconceptions about the role they play and how a speech like the State of the Union gets produced.
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Obama’s State of the Union Likely To Be a Policy Laundry List
Tweet Share on Facebook February 12, 2013 CommentThe State of the Union is an odd speech. It's the one time in a typical year that the president can count on to speak directly to the entire nation (or as much of it as he's going to get). But because of that it's also almost always a rhetorical mess—a policy laundry list that tends to lack thematic coherence. This isn't for lack of effort on the part of the speechwriters, and sometimes the presidents.
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GOP Pulls Balanced Budget Amendment Out of Their 1990s Playbook
Tweet Share on Facebook February 11, 2013 CommentI wrote in my column a few weeks back that conservatives seem stuck in the 1990s. The NRA swaggers like the organization that could claim credit for taking down so many Democratic members of Congress … nearly two decades ago; House Republicans—including some from the class of 1994, apparently trying to relive their, uh, inglory years—are openly aching for a government shutdown; some even want an impeachment. It almost begs the question: What hoary policy proposal will they summon out of the Gingrich years next? The answer is apparently the Balanced Budget Amendment.
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On Drones, It's Not Obama to Be Worried About—It's the Next Guy
Tweet Share on Facebook February 11, 2013 CommentTucked at the end of today's New York Times piece about the parallels between President Obama's use of executive powers and President Bush's is a pair of quotations that neatly sums up the problem Democrats and liberals have (or at least should have) regarding Obama and his use of drones.
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McChrystal: 'Enhanced Interrogation Techniques' Didn’t Work
Tweet Share on Facebook February 8, 2013 CommentRetired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, out promoting his new memoir, was at the Aspen Institute today and had some interesting comments about "enhanced interrogation techniques," also known as torture. His team used them a bit in Iraq, he said, but he has ultimately come to the conclusion that such tactics don't work.
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The GOP's Electoral College Scheme and the Party of Whiners
Tweet Share on Facebook February 7, 2013 CommentWhen did rural, Republican voters become namby-pamby whiners? A number of things have bothered me about the GOP plan to gerrymander the Electoral College, not least of which being the anti-democratic (as opposed to anti-Democratic) quality to it—what I have characterized as an iniquitous attempt to bargain with an unfriendly reality, and what New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait calls winning without actually having to win.
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GOP Attempt to Gerrymander the Electoral College Is the New Normal
Tweet Share on Facebook January 31, 2013 CommentThe GOP's attempt to gerrymander the Electoral College by having a few swing states distribute their electoral votes according to congressional district rather than through the winner of the popular vote seems to be collapsing. The scheme has been voted down (Virginia) or talked down (Ohio, Florida, Michigan), in four of the states in question. Only Wisconsin (where the governor is walking back his initial enthusiasm for the idea) and Pennsylvania still seem to be seriously considering the notion.
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GOP Megadonor Foster Friess: City Votes Should Be Discounted
Tweet Share on Facebook January 25, 2013 CommentVotes from "center cities" should be discounted when considering who won a mandate in last November's elections, according to GOP megadonor Foster Friess. Apparently urban votes are insufficiently in tune with the pro free market movement which is sweeping the country and, in his view, handed the GOP a mandate in the 2012 elections … even though they took national losses across the board.
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Obama's Second Inaugural Was a Shot Across the Tea Party Bow
Tweet Share on Facebook January 21, 2013 CommentPresident Obama's second inaugural address enunciated a liberal governing philosophy scarcely expressed so clearly to start a presidential term since Franklin Roosevelt three quarters of a century ago. In doing so he sent a direct message to the Tea Party-animated right: that they do not have a monopoly on the Founding Fathers or their values.
