It was good to see some of the Obama swagger return during Tuesday night’s State of the Union address. When the polls and the elections are going the wrong way, when the culture wars and the race strife and the terrorist attacks are at full swing, it’s easy to start thinking this guy is not quite up to the task at hand. But no, he’s earned his gray hair. The economy is improving, Obamacare is taking hold and yes, it is smarter to use military restraint. “This is good news, people.” Did you notice Obama gave a shout-out to his home state? He said he still sees, as he said in Boston a decade ago, not a liberal or a conservative America but a United States of America. “I said this because I had seen it in my own life, in a nation that gave someone like me a chance; because I grew up in Hawaii, a melting pot of races and customs; because I made Illinois my home, a state of small towns, rich farmland and one of the world’s great cities; a microcosm of the country where Democrats and Republicans and Independents, good people of every ethnicity and every faith, share certain bedrock values.” Well, the president is entitled to a certain amount of hyperbole, and we’ll take a compliment on the national stage when we can get it. –Fletcher Farrar, editor and publisher
This article appears in Jan 22-28, 2015.
