Danielle Sorcher
Reporter
In the recent State of the Union Address on Wednesday, January 27th, President Barack Obama aired his views on where America stands right now, and where it needs to go next. He touched on a multitude of issues including tax cuts, job stimuli, and the “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” military policy.
The speech itself was different than most others in years past. “There’s been a tradition since Reagan of pointing out someone in the crowd and using an individual anecdote to illustrate a point or to create a moment in the speech,” Stephen Vehslage, AP US Government and Politics teacher said. “But Obama didn’t do that. It was the first time since the early 80’s that they haven’t pointed to someone in the crowd as part of the speech.”
Another difference in the speech was the fact that Obama challenged a decision that the Supreme Court had made recently. “An interesting moment was when the President directly criticized a recent decision made by the Supreme Court about campaign finance reform,” Mr. Vehslage said. “You could see Justice Alito shake his head slightly in disagreement with what the president was saying. It was an unusual moment. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sitting president directly take on a Supreme Court decision in the State of the Union Address.”
The atmosphere overall could be described as fairly tense at times. “I thought it was definitely polarized,” said sophomore Jackson Busch. “I saw lots of instances where the people on one side (most of whom were Democrats) were on their feet in applause, while on the other side, people were seated in silence. You rarely saw an instance of bipartisan approval with anything President Obama said,” he said.
Sophomore Chris Dijs mostly agreed. “The atmosphere was pretty tense — it seemed like the president was distressed over the recent Massachusetts elections, and the fact that it doesn’t look like his healthcare plan will go through,” he said. “That’s the stuff he’s been working on for the past few months and it looks like it’s going down the drain.”
Students’ reactions to the President’s policies differed. “[President Obama is] proposing lots of tax cuts to the middle class,” Jackson said. “It’s important to do this because we see a lot of the middle class struggling. In fact, I’d like to see tax cuts across the board, not just for a certain group of Americans.”
However, Chris also sees the negative side of tax cuts. “In a way, the tax cuts are good because, of course, people want to keep their money. But the government doesn’t seem to have enough money, so they almost need more taxes. But then again, people need to re-stimulate the economy by spending the money they save by tax cuts,” he said. “It’s kind of two sided.”
Obama said creating job opportunities remains one of his top priorities. Jackson shared his opinion about the importance of jobs. “I definitely agree with the plan to stimulate jobs,” he said. “To paraphrase what he [President Obama] said, there’s been a recovery on Wall Street, but Main Street is still hurting. I think that the job market needs to be turned around, and quickly.”
One of the more controversial issues is Obama’s plan to get rid of the “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” policy that forbids gays from openly joining the military. While some disagree with this decision, others feel strongly that this is the right thing to do. “I think [Obama’s plan] is great,” junior Jillian Vasco said. “It’s very prejudiced to do otherwise, and we’ve mostly come to accept gays in our community — the President backing it is huge.”
“This is a country that prides itself on equality,” Jackson said. “So forbidding gays from openly joining the military is akin to forbidding a certain race or religious group from joining.”
After the State of the Union Address, Senator John McCain publicly disagreed with President Obama’s point-of-view on this issue. “At a time when our armed forces are fighting and sacrificing on the battlefield, now is not the time to abandon the policy,” Senator McCain said.
Jackson indicated that he understood where Senator McCain was coming from, but that he still feels differently. “I certainly see what McCain identified as an obstacle, because our military is occupied with two very large and costly wars, and it might prove difficult to implement in the short-term,” Jackson said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do. I don’t see it as an immediate priority, but it should definitely happen,” he said.
Jillian had other thoughts about the troops in Iraq. “I had an issue with pulling the troops out of Iraq. It’s disrespectful. He set a pull-out date, but we’ve already been there for a while and spent a lot of money,” she said. “It’s disrespectful to soldiers who have been fighting and died, and to their families as well.”
Obama also indicated that distrust in the government is a present-day problem. Chris shared his views on this: “I definitely agree with his statement about a ‘deficit of trust’,” Chris said. “The last few years there was a lot of corruption- for example, Blagojevich- and politicians have the image of lying a lot of the time. I think it’s good to have a bond between the politicians and the people, and we need to rebuild that,” he said.
The speech seemed to get a lot of points across, addressing key issues on the minds of Americans today. “I think it was an effective speech and may have helped boost [Obama’s] approval ratings,” Mr. Vehslage said. “Besides [a few things]it was a standard speech outlining the administration’s priorities, providing some concessions to Republicans, while also trying to rally the support from Democrats.”
