NEW YORK--My fellow Americans, the state of the union is angry. Also strong.
Presidents usually do say it’s strong. But this year, you would have to go with strongly angry.
President Barack Obama’s address last week was hardly the first to be delivered in a sea of rancor. The one Bill Clinton gave during impeachment--now, there was a doozy.
But seldom have so many people been angry for so many different reasons.
Everybody’s having a fight with someone.
John McCain is under attack by the Tea Party folk in Arizona, one of whose leaders just said she’d rather vote for her dog.
(Meanwhile, the Tea Partyites are squabbling among themselves so much that you fear for the crockery.)
In New York, Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand were recently compared to parakeets by a fractious fellow Democrat.
The House Democrats are livid with senators for all that health care drama. The House Republicans barely think about the Senate at all, because they’re so busy hating on the House Democrats.
The Cabinet members look a little sullen.
On speech night, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was fresh from a congressional hearing in which one of the Democrats ranted at him as if he were something way worse than a dog or a parakeet.
The congressman in question was from Massachusetts. Where, you may have heard, people are furious.
The Supreme Court probably came in for the speech cranky, too.
Justice John Paul Stevens, 89, may be planning to retire. And can you imagine how irate people are going to get when President Obama tries to name a successor?
There isn’t a single jurist in the United States who doesn’t hold some opinion that 41 members of the Senate would find outrageous.
Maybe the administration can locate a nice 50-year-old lawyer who was plunged into a coma on the day he or she passed the bar and only emerged last week.
Barack Obama does not normally do mad. Peeved, yes. He looked pretty peeved when he was being interviewed by Diane Sawyer. What’s might we expect him to have done Friday when he met with the House Republicans?
Have you ever seen all the House Republicans in one place? It’s like a herd of rabid otters.
“The one thing I’m clear about is that I’d rather be a really good one-term president, than a mediocre two-term president,” he told Miss Sawyer.
Being a good one-term president probably sounds great to him right now. Run the Obama Foundation and never have to deal with Joe Lieberman again.
But name one really good president walked away after one term.
James Polk did O.K. But do you really think Barack Obama wants to be remembered as the James Polk of the 21st Century?
State of the Union night was not the best moment in history of the president’s relationship with Congress.
On a scare of 1 to 10, 10 being impeachment, we are currently bouncing along somewhere between 6 (honeymoon is so over) and 8 (“You lie!”
The president’s call for putting limits on lobbyist campaign donations may have pushed it nearer to 9.
Practically everybody in Congress resents the proposal to freeze spending on discretionary programs that President Obama suggested.
Democrats hate it because they like discretionary programs. Republicans say it’s way too little, too late. And, besides, it’s their issue. Hands off.
Actually, President Obama might be on to something.
The last few presidents, generally, only had luck getting big things passed when they proposed the other party’s programs.
Bill Clinton got welfare reform. George W. Bush got education reform and the Medicare drug plan.
Both of those were, basically, Democratic ideas, although President Bush added his own personal twist of not paying for them.
Right now, the Republicans are calling for a bigger, bolder attack on the deficit.
This seems to involve cutting taxes while slicing away at all spending that does not involve the military or anyone over the age of 65.
Also, hands off agriculture.
Meanwhile, the people watching the State of the Union from the comfort of their homes were really, really angry, too.
Even if their homes are comfortable, they still aren’t worth as much as they were three years ago.
Voters appear to be less ticked off at the president than they are at Congress.
The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 93 percent of those surveyed said there was too much partisan fighting in Washington and very little cooperation.
It would be interesting to meet the 5 percent of respondents who disagreed.
Perhaps they were part of the 6 percent who told the pollsters that they couldn’t remember for whom they had voted in the 2008 election.
Maybe one of them would like to be nominated to the Supreme Court.
