SOTU Rapid Reaction
By Wow. Perhaps the ghost of Howard Zinn was speaking through our President tonight. In a little over an hour, he called out the Supreme Court for its recent decision on campaign donations, reminded Republicans they are here to serve their country rather than their own ambitions, and chided pundits for reducing serious debates to silly arguments. I don’t know whether to be glad to see him speaking truth to the powers that be around him or worried: he seemed most effective at the parts of his speech where he was reaching out to the opposition rather than staring them down.
And he didn’t spend much time on foreign policy, but no surprise. Josh Rogin has a translation of his foreign policy remarks here.
He did, though, end on the right tone:
“Democracy in a nation of 300 million people can be noisy and messy and complicated… the only reason we are here is because generations of Americans weren’t afraid to do what was hard.”
Well said, Mr. President.