Wednesday, January 25, 2012

State Of The Union Address





Admittedly, I don’t watch much TV. I occasionally watch Rachel Maddow because I think she’s a sharp woman and presents politics with a fresh perspective. And I do love to watch tennis matches (right now the Aussie Open is playing the quarterfinal rounds). I seldom watch any of these political debates because they make me mad at our entire, broken, system of government.

But last night I had a choice of watching the Aussie Open Quarterfinal matches or watching Obama give his State Of The Union Address. In a rare mood of patriotism, I opted for Obama.

I made that choice because I think the Republicans have been getting tons of press time lately in all these debates, and I was curious to hear how Obama would respond, more in tone than in words. I was not disappointed.

The thing that had the most impact on me was Obama ragging on Congress for being dysfunctional. This split between parties is killing our democratic system of government, and nothing—NOTHING—is getting accomplished in Washington because of it. At one point Obama called the congressional fight over the budget a fiasco. Frankly, I can’t think of a better word for it, for what has been happening in the House and Senate for years.

Okay, I’ll step off my soapbox and get back to the SOTUA….

I thought Obama came off sounding strong, forceful, and perhaps even hopeful. He sounded presidential, which I feel is something totally lacking in the GOP debates. I’ve always enjoyed hearing Obama. He is a master at speaking, with great timing in his words and phrases. He is the one person in Washington that I think can match Bill Clinton in speaking ability.

In short, I very much enjoyed the address, and thought our president did his usual superb job of delivering his message, once again, that Congress needs to get its shit together and work for the country instead of working for their party. I don’t want to get too negative here, so I won’t delve into my impression of the GOP response to the address.

And of course, as soon as the GOP response had completed, I quickly switch to ESPN to watch the last of the quarterfinal tennis match between Andy Murray and Kei Nishikori, and there I was disappointed. I cheered for Nishikori, who lost badly. :(

2 comments:

Lou Belcher said...

You could have watched the full match. I fell asleep with the TV on and woke up periodically to the reruns of the State of the Union. CNN ran it twice more after the original.... maybe three times, I might have slept through one of them. Anyway, I just hope the congress takes their dysfunctional behavior to heart and does something construction to work together.

Thanks for the update on the tournament.

Lou

by Sarah Lee said...

I'm sorry to say I missed the State of the Union, so I'm happy to read your view of it. I'm glad that Obama sees congress for what it is, and that he acknowledges it. :) It would be nice to know something could be done to fix the damage and the dysfunction.