Goodbye, Gingrich?

Sick with disappointment that I missed the Tin-Tin movie showing in Eureka, I had to settle for Obama’s State of the Union and Thursday’s Republican debate in Jacksonville.

Await a presidential State of the Union address with keen anticipation? It’s like saying one looks forward to taking a niece to the Nutcracker. The last time I truly enjoyed one – the speech, not the ballet – was Bill Clinton’s in 1998, and it wasn’t because of anything he said. It was his terrific aplomb, despite the fact that the Lewinsky scandal was breaking over his head. He was rewarded with a bounce of ten points, from 59 to 69 per cent popular approval. The message was clear. We, the people, couldn’t care less about Monica. In fact, we the people thoroughly approve. The following year, the U.S. Senate was trying him for impeachment, after months of  steady servings in the press of Monica’s semen-stained dress, and here was Bill as bouncy as ever, rock solid at 69 per cent.

Normally, the American people don’t set much stock by State of the Union addresses. Half the times Ronald Reagan – the Great Communicator – gave the annual State of the Union address across his two terms in office, he promptly sank in the polls by 3 or 4 points. People turned on the tv set, gasped and said, “He’s the president?”

By all rights, Obama should be a natural at the job. The desired mix is inspirational – his forte – and notionally programmatic, though the history books are knee deep in empty pledges made on such occasions. But somehow the methodical rhythms of Obama’s high-minded eloquence has a narcotic effect on me.

Last year Obama said the American people did “big things,” omitting to qualify this with the fact that mostly they’re big stupid things. This year the menu seemed to be a potpourri of things big and small, of the sort Clinton could gabble about by the hour: retraining schemes, public/corporate partnerships.

Then suddenly, out of nowhere, there was a ringing pledge to prosecute those responsible for the mortgage crisis.  Next day, Glenn Ford gave a useful summary in Black Agenda Report.

“President Obama had hoped to put on a big show – a huge con, really – at his State of the Union address, by announcing a monetary ‘settlement’ of massive banker criminality in housing foreclosures. Obama’s operatives have doggedly pressed for a settlement that would effectively give banks immunity from prosecution. But he was thwarted by a small group of state attorneys general that wanted a real investigation into the crime of the century. So the president was finally forced to set up a federal unit of his own. Since Obama’s own law...

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