Excerpts from columns and editorials about President Barack Obama’s Tuesday night address to Congress and the GOP response from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal:
Obama now fully realizes that Americans want confidence and optimism in their presidents, and he stood ready to provide it: “We will rebuild. We will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”
Obama has only a few days to bask in the success of his first major address to Congress. Shortly he will submit to lawmakers a summary of his 2010 budget and, if he really does make those “hard choices” his aides have promised, he will surely offend both Republicans and his own Democrats. His political and legislative skills will have to be as good as his oratorical skills for his ambitious, far-reaching agenda to have a chance of becoming a reality.
Obama’s references to the Bush administration were indirect, but he did note “the stark reality of what we’ve inherited: a trillion-dollar deficit, a financial crisis and a costly recession.”
Tuesday night, Obama took ownership of those problems. It is now his deficit, his crisis and his recession. We anxiously await what the state of the union will be when he gives that address for real.
ó Scripps Howard News Service
President Obama had not yet begun to speak Tuesday night before House Republican leader John A. Boehner released a statement decrying “mountains of debt … for a spending spree that we simply cannot afford” and fuming about raising taxes during a recession. And yet Boehner’s remarks also hinted at the quandary faced by the GOP in these early weeks of the Obama era. Republicans, Boehner insisted, “want to be partners with the president” but are stymied by congressional Democrats.
It’s no wonder that Boehner would prefer to fight with his congressional colleagues than with the new president. Five weeks ago, Obama inherited a collapsing economy and a rattled public. Since then, jobs have disappeared in shocking numbers; the Dow Jones industrial average has lost 11 percent of its value since Inauguration Day. Yet Obama remains an enormously popular figure, committed to a forceful, activist government, armed with a national mandate to intervene in the economy and to restore America’s standing abroad. … Two polls this week suggest that about two-thirds of Americans approve of his performance.
… For Boehner and other Republicans, their refusal to back the stimulus plan has bolstered party morale. But it’s at considerable risk. A new New York Times poll found that 79 percent of those surveyed believe that the GOP should be doing more to cooperate with Obama, compared with just 15 percent who said the party should stick to its core principles.
ó Los Angeles Times
There were many good lines in Jindal’s speech, but he suffered the usual disadvantage of the opposition. He had no audience popping up like targets in a lively game of Whac-A-Mole to applaud him, and his delivery lacked the passion and personality that are Obama’s supreme gifts.
Republicans have a lot to overcome, given their failure to live up to their self-professed standards. Obama has come to the presidency when the public is fearful about losing jobs, retirement savings and health insurance. It wants a nanny and Obama looks an awful lot like Mary Poppins.
… Old ways die hard as demonstrated by the silly popping up and down by members of Congress during Obama’s speech and the knowing winks and one-upmanship practiced by the applauding factions. These people looked like children trying to emulate the bumper sticker, “My Kid Can Beat Up Your Honor Student.”
Don’t look for many Democrats to become converts to fiscal restraint now that they have the power to do whatever they want. The question is whether Republicans can demonstrate the superiority of their ideas at a time when the public memory of the party failing to live up to its principles is still fresh.
As Gov. Jindal noted, “You elected Republicans to champion limited government, fiscal discipline, and personal responsibility. Instead, Republicans went along with earmarks and big government spending in Washington.”
Repentance can lead to quick forgiveness in Jindal’s Catholic Church, but in politics absolution does not come as easily.
ó Cal Thomas
Tribune Media Services
That Mr. Jindal continues to eschew a role for government in extraordinary cases like Katrina (or an economic meltdown) is evidence of an acute case of ideological rigidity. Or maybe that’s only when he’s speaking on national television. According to House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn’s office, Mr. Jindal is pressing Congress for up to $6 billion in Gulf Coast recovery funding for housing assistance, case management, debris removal and other vital projects.
If Mr. Jindal firmly believes that “the strength of America is not found in our government” and that “the way to strengthen our country is to restrain spending in Washington,” he should lead by example by forgoing the funds he seeks.
ó Washington Post
I know, I know, it is the Obama hour and if you raise questions about him you are a right-wing nutcase or an obstructionist Republican. But a mite’s worth of candor gets you to the assertion that it is utterly, totally, wildly irresponsible to plot new federal spending on health when we haven’t yet figured out what to do about Medicare ó or had the nerve to take on Social Security or recognize that the federal government is already spending far, far more on our entitlement programs as on defense, that it has already dug itself into an impossible hole and really needs to quit digging.
ó Jay Ambrose
Scripps Howard News