President Obama addressed Congress last Tuesday. This annual event is always a strange mix of pageantry, absurd repetitive applause, demagogy, and...schmaltz. The First Lady did what presidential wives are supposed to do: look enraptured.
This was, nevertheless, an impressive performance by the President. Despite the heath care debacle, he rose above the polls and a negative narrative, giving a rhetorical performance with Kennedy accents. The speech was delivered with self-confidence. Obama acted imperial and almost visionary. He walked through all of the flash-points and did not get burned. His passionate claim for America's primacy and creativity are giving the Democrats a moral boost (for how long?)
On foreign policy he claimed the high ground and made a convincing plea in favor of diplomacy, which was so marginalized under the Bush years. Strangely the now famous Asian "pivot" got lost amid rather half-baked assertions regarding Afghanistan, the Middle East, Iraq. The Russian and Chinese elephants in the room were ignored. The EU was a "dummy" as usual.
He was the most convincing in his revisionist vision of the United States, liberated from the energy blackmail and able to invest in education, infrastructure, R and D, mobility, infrastructure, minimum wage. Rightly, he defended trade deals with Asia and the EU. His fellow Democrat, the Senate majority leader Harry Reid, did not waste a second to move against the favored fast-track approach, playing Brutus for an audience of Unionists and a Democratic base which is pathologically as xenophobic as the Tea Party. With friends like Reid, you don't need to look further for enemies.
Obama is preparing his legacy, trying to overcome the blunders which smeared last year: health care, Benghazi, Intelligence. The mid-term elections will be a test case. The Democrats might lose more seats in the House and their majority in the Senate is a question more than a given. The President can be an asset, as he was Tuesday. He can also be a liability, as during his first presidential debate with Governor Mitt Romney. He is unpredictable and his appearances veer from looking aloof and detached, to being involved. The Republicans for their part are engulfed in a repeat of a 100 years internal war and might yet again overkill their own rather than focusing on an adversary who should never be underestimated. There is still fire there and he was able to get out of the "lame duck" trap which was laid out for him.
This promises to be an interesting year. Opportunities and even some form of bi-party cooperation exist (immigration). The President however should distance himself more from the Iranian doings. If a deal can be worked out, the better for all. If not, the sanctions tsunami will be unstoppable. Sometimes Obama gives the impression considering his diplomatic approach to Tehran as a replica of Nixon's overture to China. Such an analysis only gives Iran the importance it doesn't deserve, while undermining the relationship of the US with the likes of Turkey or Saudi Arabia which do not intend playing second fiddle to the Mullahs.
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