President Barack Obama, intent upon disproving notions that he’s just a lame duck, strode confidently before Congress on Tuesday and demonstrated his determination to fly using just his left wing.
For one hour and one minute, he actually seemed to be flying. Buoyed by his soaring rhetoric and new uplifting polls, this left-winged president seemed able to circle the Capitol dome.
But that of course only left him right back where he started. Which made it clear to all of us — and probably even his White House strategists — that his proposals will never fly with just a left wing to power them.
So you might think that reality would be terribly frustrating for a proud president. That would be true only if you are assuming his address was only about enacting all of his powerfully stated progressive ideas that are laden with middle-class populism.
But, of course, his speech wasn’t all about ideas that are aimed at helping middle-class families cope with daily problems of raising children and getting educations so they can find jobs. My guess is that the president wasn’t floating his ideas as dome-circling exercises but as his own presidential legacy laps.
He wants to be known as the president who proposed a soaring agenda of progressive ideas designed to help a middle class that is being left farther behind America’s richest 1 percent. New statistics show the economy is growing and creating jobs at a rate not seen in the 21st century. And (guess what!) polls are now showing Obama approval ratings are climbing as well.
So even if left-wing power can never get his proposals off the ground in the Republican Congress, Obama now clearly hopes history will herald him as a president who at least proposed and pushed progressive ideas based on core Middle American values and goals.
What are those? Helping families with two wage earners afford child care. Making two-year community college educations free. And paying for all that by closing tax loopholes and raising taxes for America’s richest 1 percent.
All are rooted in middle-class values and goals. All of them could have been the intellectual property of a Republican think tank visionary. (As Obama’s health reform was.)
Unfortunately, Republicans wasted their official response by failing to deliver a Grand Old Party alternative agenda. But one exists. A group of conservative think tankers who call themselves the “Young Guns” published a new book, titled “Room to Grow,” that’s filled with new conservative ideas; it can be found on the group’s online YG Network.
So Tuesday night belonged to a lame duck Democrat who was badly outnumbered in the congressional chamber and was empowered only by his own left wing. Yet he delivered a powerful appeal to America’s struggling middle class.
Martin Schram, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, is a veteran Washington journalist, author and TV documentary executive. Email: martin.schram@gmail.com.
