The Week: Most Recent Barack Obama:State of the Union 2011

Was Obama's State of the Union speech plagiarized?

By The Week Staff — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 11:40:00 -0500

The president's State of the Union address may not have been an entirely original piece of work, says presidential scholar Alvin Felzenberg at U.S. News & World Report. The columnist accuses President Obama of "cutting and pasting" moments from speeches by Woodrow Wilson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and others. The address "contained enough recycled ideas and lines lifted from speeches of others to make historians wince," says Felzenberg. Does he have a case? (Hear radio host Mark Levin echo the charges)

Yes. Obama is running out of rhetorical steam: Whatever you think of Obama's politics...

Morning in Obama's America

By The Week Staff — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 16:05:00 -0500

State of the Union addresses are often a wash; the one Obama delivered this week was a watershed. The evening produced two visions, one hopeful, the other infused with fear; one delivered from high ground, the other emerging from a low bog of grievance, gloom, and doom. The events of the coming months and the direction of the 2012 campaign will be shaped by the terrain that each camp has claimed.

In his speech, the President, who for his first two years was the great legislator, was, as he had been in 2008 and again in Tucson, the great communicator. He articulated a powerful narrative, rooted...

Sarah Palin's response to the State of the Union: WTF?

By The Week Staff — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:50:00 -0500

The story: Sarah Palin has chimed in on President Obama's State of the Union address with a dig at his "Win the Future" slogan. Writing on her Facebook page, the former Alaska governor noted wryly that "the title's acronym [WTF] seemed more accurate than much of the content"; she took issue, for instance with Obama's "big government" plan to finance high-speed trains, saying it would leave America on a "bullet train to bankruptcy." The Tea Party favorite repeated her acronym observation on Greta van Susteren's Fox News show, seemingly trying to underscore it as her new catchphrase, and her conservative...

Dow 12,000: A State of the Union bump?

By The Week Staff — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 10:25:00 -0500

The Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed 12,000 for the first time since June 2008, just hours after President Obama delivered a State of the Union address that Huffington Post political editor Howard Fineman calls "the most pro-business speech a Democrat has given, since, well, that a Democrat has given." Obama called for lower corporate tax rates and ditching unnecessary regulation, and proposed unspecific steps to lower the deficit. Did Obama's speech nudge the Dow above the psychologically important 12,000 threshold? (Watch a Bloomberg discussion about the Dow's rise)

Obama...

State of the Union: Top 6 petty controversies

By The Week Staff — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 15:46:00 -0500

In last night's State of the Union address, the president spent more than an hour addressing hefty issues, from America's failing education system to the deficit, and critics have zealously dissected his every syllable. But a number of less weighty issues received critical scrutiny, too — from Rep. Paul Ryan's aggressively gleaming hair to Michelle Obama's dress. Here are six non-policy points of discussion:

1. Michele Bachmann's "crazy eyes"
Bachmann's Tea Party rebuttal is being noted as much for her sideways stare as for its content. Not only was her rebuttal laced "with all sorts of nonsense...

Obama's State of the Union: Hits and misses

By The Week Staff — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:02:00 -0500

President Obama's second State of the Union address, delivered Tuesday evening, met with mostly positive reviews. While some viewers found the hour-long speech short on entertainment value, most approved of its content. Now that the dust has settled, commentators are debating which elements of the address were most successful — and where the president could have done better. Here, a rundown of Obama's hits and misses:

HITS

His bipartisanship
In a single speech, Obama "shrewdly... ended the anger of our politics," says Howard Fineman in The Huffington Post. The president delivered the "most...

Paul Ryan vs. Michele Bachmann: Battle of the rebuttals

By The Week Staff — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 10:26:00 -0500

After most presidents' State of the Union speeches, a single member of the opposing party traditionally delivers a rebuttal. Last night, however, there were two. Republican leaders were less than pleased with Rep. Michele Bachmann's (R-Minn.) decision to give her own "Tea Party" rebuttal, at the behest of Tea Party Express, immediately after the sanctioned GOP response from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis). House Speaker John Boehner called Bachmann's speech "unusual," and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) emphasized that Bachmann is just "going to have opinions," like her 543 colleagues. But did Bachmann...

State of the Union: Did Obama change the conversation?

By The Week Staff — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 10:00:00 -0500

At-home viewers were overwhelmingly impressed with President Obama's second State of the Union address Tuesday night, according to instant CNN and CBS News polls. The pundits were more divided, with many calling the economy-focused, "American must compete" speech flat and lacking in specificity. Obama called for a freeze in spending and measures to reduce the national debt, but also pushed targeted federal investments in energy, education, and infrastructure. With deficit-hawk Republicans shaping the debate since November, did the speech help Obama regain control? (Watch a Fox News discussion about...

Obama's State of the Union: Live blogging the opinion

By The Week Staff — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 23:17:00 -0500

President Obama addressed Congress and the country Tuesday night in his second State of the Union speech. TheWeek.com live-blogged commentary on the major themes of the evening as they developed. Here, a running account of the reaction:

THE REPUBLICAN RESPONSE

11:08 p.m.: The Guardian's Richard Adams believes that not only did Michele Bachmann's chart-assisted rebuttal make Paul Ryan look good, "she's making Sarah Palin sound like Viscount Castlereagh."

10:57 p.m.: Michele Bachmann's Tea Party response "played very well off of Paul Ryan's speech," says Erick Erickson on CNN. "Short words, simple...

State of The Union 2011: A viewer's guide

By The Week Staff — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 18:45:00 -0500

President Obama will deliver his second State of the Union address this evening to both Houses of Congress and as many as 50 million television viewers. The president is expected to use the hour-long speech to push his credentials as a pro-business centrist, and buoy Americans about the state of the economic recovery. (Watch an AP report about Obama's focus.) Here, a guide to tonight's setting, what the president might say — and what he ought to say, but won't:

THINGS TO NOTE BEFORE THE SPEECH
• Unusual seat-mate pairings: Lawmakers have decided to shuffle the seating plan as a mark...

How the State of the Union signals the rebooting of Obama

By The Week Staff — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 14:27:00 -0500

Since November's "shellacking" at the polls, The White House has been engaged in a "full-scale reboot of the Obama presidency," says John Heilemann at New York. Gone is the "frenetic, transactional, shambolic style" of former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. In will come a "less cloistered and more strategic" commander-in-chief, with a revamped team of aides ready to establish "a compelling narrative" for where the president hopes to take the country. Tuesday night's State of the Union address, writes Heilemann, will give Obama a chance to soar above the "posturing, petulance and incessant bile-spewing...

Obama's State of the Union: Can he reclaim the center?

By The Week Staff — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 12:20:00 -0500

President Obama will launch a bid for the political center during Tuesday evening's State of the Union address, aiming to recast himself as a "business-friendly, pragmatic progressive" rather than a "big-government liberal," reports The New York Times. The president will also call for an end to the partisan rancor that has divided the body politic for much of the past two years. Obama will appeal to "independent voters and business owners and executives alienated by the expansion of government and the partisan legislative fights of the past two years." Can Obama spin himself as a centrist? (Watch...

Obama's centrist 'pivot': Is it real?

By The Week Staff — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 09:36:00 -0500

A State of the Union preview

By The Week Staff — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 12:45:00 -0500