Response to “Fluff”
In an op-ed last week, “On Fluff,” lowers Alan Liu and Ahmad Rahman chastised President Obama’s State of the Union as “self-lauding,” stating that “he patted his back so much that he might have injured his rotator cuff.”
Yet both authors seem to be erroneously equating joviality and friendliness with empty humor. In doing so, they misinterpret the intent of this year’s address: a call for bipartisanship.
As though to smile were a sin. President Obama has much to be proud of in the past six years, as he outlined throughout his speech. Even Liu and Rahman will recognize that this is and has been an integral part of the address. Yet both authors seem to be erroneously equating joviality and friendliness with empty humor. In doing so, they misinterpret the intent of this year’s address: a call for bipartisanship.
Having lost both House and Senate, the President has no choice but to tread carefully given the GOP’s track record of blind opposition of anything that comes out of his mouth. Despite these obstacles, President Obama has still managed to get a good deal of work done. This year’s speech did not outline many plans for the future: that is because, for the most part, the success of America for the remainder of Obama’s presidency relies on the opposition’s willingness to cooperate, and at the very least their willingness to not try to prevent policies that have proven themselves to work. In his own words, “These policies will continue to work, as long as politics don’t get in the way.”
Liu and Rahman seem dissatisfied that Obama somehow failed to go deeper into any of the proposals he did make. Obama did, in fact, elaborate on many of his plans, and for those of us that didn’t listen, we have nobody to blame but ourselves. Take, for example, the bold tax cuts he suggested, $3,000 per child per year, for American families. He called upon politicians to try living from experience if they truly believed the current minimum wage was reasonable. He called for change in foreign policy, asking for the authorization of force against ISIL. None of this is fluff.
Similarly misled is Liu and Rahman’s halfhearted attempt to chastise Senator Joni Ernst on her response. Sen. Ernst did, in fact, engage with a few of the points Obama brought to light, namely foreign policy, the economy and the Keystone XL pipeline. Furthermore, Ernst strongly voiced similar sentiments leaning towards more bipartisanship in congress. A Republican call for cooperation is not any less a call for cooperation, and Ernst was able to deliver in that regard. Ironically, the plans that Sen. Ernst did elaborate on are the very ones that Liu and Rahman oppose. It seems the issue here is not so much that Ernst failed to address, but more that she failed to agree.
To call the State of the Union address and response counterproductive, to call it “fluff,” is to completely misinterpret the purpose of these sorts of speech, and by induction, misinterpret politics at its core. Successful government in a democracy is not government in which both parties agree all the time: on the contrary, that is a sign of an unhealthy government. Calls for bipartisanship are, in many cases, made in vain, but the baby steps, as politicians on both sides slowly begin to agree on issues, are the biggest victories. Thus, Tuesday was not a waste of everyone’s time: just another spectacle of democracy’s gears in action.