Obama’s populist case for his re-election

What happened

President Obama used his State of the Union address this week to frame his re-election campaign as a battle for the middle class, calling income inequality the “defining issue” in the U.S., and asking the rich to pay their “fair share of taxes.” The president said that anyone earning over a million dollars should pay at least 30 percent in taxes—a proposal he named the “Buffett rule,” after the billionaire investor who famously complained that he paid lower taxes than his secretary. Added revenue from higher taxes on the rich, Obama said, could be used to reduce the deficit and reduce cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and other social programs. “You can call this class warfare all you want,” he said, “but asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.”

Striking an optimistic and distinctly populist tone, Obama said recent job-growth reports show that the economy is recovering, and outlined proposals that he said would create “an America built to last.” He proposed tax breaks for businesses that manufacture their products in the U.S., and using money “we’re no longer spending on war” to rebuild infrastructure and develop the clean-energy industry. He also announced a plan to allow “underwater” homeowners—who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth—to refinance at reduced rates. In the Republican rebuttal, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels said Obama’s proposals to spend more money and micromanage the economy would lead to “national bankruptcy,” and he castigated him for his “constant efforts to divide us.”

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What the editorials said

Obama didn’t give us a State of the Union, said the New York Post, so much as a “State of My Campaign.” He made it clear he intends to win this election by taking a “page out of the Occupy Wall Street playbook” and blaming the wealthy for America’s problems, instead of his “failed presidency.” What else can he say? said The Wall Street Journal. Obama can’t run on his failed stimulus spending or the unpopular Obamacare overhaul of the health-care system, nor can he claim credit for “the weakest recovery since the Great Depression.” The “politics of envy” is all he’s got left.

Yes, it was a campaign speech, said The Baltimore Sun. “But given the state of Washington, what else could we expect?” Few if any of Obama’s policies have any hope of being made law, thanks to Republican obstruction. Yet as the president pointed out, the economy has added 3 million jobs since the Great Recession, which began during a Republican administration. “We’ve come too far to turn back now,” Obama said—a theme that will define his bid for re-election.

What the columnists said

What a difference a year makes, said Jonathan Cohn in TheNewRepublic.com. This time last year, Obama—humbled by his midterm election shellacking—used the State of the Union as a plea for bipartisanship. “It didn’t get him anywhere.” This year, buoyed by the slowly recovering economy, he threw down the gauntlet to Republicans, and laid the groundwork for a second-term agenda sure to please a majority. Most voters “like public works, they like a secure welfare state, and they like higher taxes on the rich.”

Given our monstrous deficit, said Rich Lowry in FoxNews.com, Obama’s pandering was deeply cynical. He made no concrete proposals to transform our “hideously complex code,” or to reduce our “groaning” Social Security and Medicare costs or our $1.3 trillion annual deficit. This speech was so lightweight it could have “floated off the teleprompter.” It all boiled down to a single message, said Burton Folsom in NationalReview.com. “We need bigger government, and more of it should be paid for by rich people.”

Obama did do a lot of pandering “to the prejudices of the electorate,” said Jonathan Chait in NYMag.com. But he tried for more than two years to be a pragmatic policy wonk, and saw his popularity drain away as Republicans blocked and battered him at every turn. This was the speech of a president who knows his “agenda is dead,” leaving him with one option: to recast himself as a “slashing populist” and win re-election.