B grade overall; less than that on content
Sorry to Mike Madden as well as Josh Marshall and others. It’s always been called SOTU for previous first-year presidents.
Weirdly, the Dallas Morning News Sunday weekly TV insert called it SOTU, but its daily prime-time programming list on Tuesday didn’t.
That said, from what I’ve read about it (I was at a Joan Baez concert!), and my overall impressions of Obama already, I’d give it a straight B. Better than that on delivery, a bit lower on content.
I don’t believe his claims that his proposed housing bailout bill will distinguish “underwater” honest buyers from spec buyers, because it has no mechanism to do that! (And, I’m far from the only person to point that out.)
Nor, given his administration’s ambiguous-at-best, temporizing-at-worse stance on Guantanamo- and rendition-related issues, do I believe his “We don’t torture” claim.
Why did that get so much GOP applause, anyway? Does the Congressional GOP have a sense Obama will strongly oppose the Leahy-Conyers “truth and reconciliation” drive? Will he try to eviscerate such a bill in Congress? Will he have AG Holder ignore it if passed? Would he even dare veto such a bill?
Beyond that, Obama’s subtle, or not-so-subtle, attempt at GOP-only blame-casting for the financial excesses of this decade gets taken to the fact-checking woodshed by the Washington Post.
Guess B.O. didn’t want to throw the name of his own “economic czar,” Larry Summers, into that mix now, did he?
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