Obama's 2016 opponent: Donald Trump
Without even uttering his name, the president repudiated Trump's politics -- and sought to take the GOP field down a peg.
By BEN SCHRECKINGER
January 13, 2016
Politico
President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech divided the field into those who are running on a message of turning around a sinking ship and those staying the course.
Without even uttering the name “Donald Trump,” Obama made his State of the Union speech an extended rejection of Trump-ism and the politics of pessimism that Trump represents. But with only 27 percent of Americans saying the country is headed in the right direction according to recent polls, he left open the question of how much his opinion actually matters.
The president’s speech Tuesday divided the field into those who are running on a message of turning around a sinking ship — the entire Republican field and Bernie Sanders — and the stay-the-course candidate, Hillary Clinton. Though it did little to set up Clinton as the heir to Obama’s legacy, her own messaging operation embraced that theme explicitly, tweeting from her account, “Seven years of progress. We need to build on it — not go backwards.”
Sanders, navigating between his support for much of Obama’s agenda and his call for a “political revolution,” chose to interpret the address as a call for change. “Tonight’s speech was important. The president reminded us not to be afraid of change, but to wield it to improve the lives of all Americans,” he tweeted.
Beyond a rejection of Trump specifically, the speech was, more broadly, a return to the earliest themes of Obama’s career with a call for a “better politics.” But in unison, the 2016 presidential field responded: Fat chance.
At the end of the speech, Hillary Clinton tweeted, “We can't let Republicans rip away @POTUS’ progress. Add your name if you agree” with a link to a page about gun control on her campaign website.
Sen. Rand Paul did not bother to attend. Neither did Sen. Ted Cruz, who instead spent Tuesday night delivering a mock State of the Union address at a campaign rally in New Hampshire, where he declared the union to be strong. “The state of Washington, on the other hand, is a manifest disaster,” he cracked, throwing in barbs aimed at Clinton and Obama. Jeb Bush tweeted his review of the speech, “7 years of empty words. America deserves better.”
Obama said that among the few regrets of his presidency was that “the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better” and the presidential field appeared determined to deepen that regret. And while Gov. Nikki Haley delivered a more upbeat Republican response – and said both parties deserve blame for problems in Washington — Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus followed by saying in a statement, “The one thing the president made clear tonight is that the next ten months will be all about ensuring he is succeeded by Hillary Clinton, who gives his failed presidency an ‘A’ grade and wants to take his divisive, left-wing agenda to the next level.”
And if Trump was the unnamed foil of Obama’s vision of a better politics, he was also only the most obvious symbol of a harsher, more smash-mouth political style that has taken hold in both presidential primaries in part because, seven years into his presidency, voters are responding to pessimism.
Obama’s assertion that “anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction,” was as much a rejection of Bernie Sanders’ rhetoric of a nation increasingly failing to meet the needs of the 99 percent as it was a rejection of Trump’s insistence that China, Mexico and even Japan are taking advantage of the United States economically.
He rejected Marco Rubio’s assessment of America’s global standing, as well as Trump’s claim that “our country doesn’t win any more.”
“I told you earlier all the talk of America’s economic decline is political hot air,” Obama said. “Well, so is all the rhetoric you hear about our enemies getting stronger and America getting weaker.”
His rejoinder was the same both to Ted Cruz’s promise to bomb the Middle East thoroughly enough to find out “if sand can glow in the dark” and to Trump’s promise to “bomb the hell out of ISIS.
“Our answer needs to be more than tough talk or calls to carpet bomb civilians. That may work as a TV sound bite, but it doesn’t pass muster on the world stage,” the president said.
Obama also had a response to Ben Carson’s opinion that a Muslim should not be president, as well as Trump’s -- and perhaps to the entire Republican Party’s desire for the president to utter the words “radical Islamic terrorism.”
“When politicians insult Muslims – whether abroad or our fellow citizens when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid is called named, that doesn’t make us safer,” he said.
Trump, for one, was not chastened by the address to adopt a loftier tone. He tweeted, “The #SOTU speech is really boring, slow, lethargic - very hard to watch!”
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Sen. Rand Paul did not bother to attend. Neither did Sen. Ted Cruz, who instead spent Tuesday night delivering a mock State of the Union address at a campaign rally in New Hampshire, where he declared the union to be strong. “The state of Washington, on the other hand, is a manifest disaster,” he cracked, throwing in barbs aimed at Clinton and Obama. Jeb Bush tweeted his review of the speech, “7 years of empty words. America deserves better.”
Obama said that among the few regrets of his presidency was that “the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better” and the presidential field appeared determined to deepen that regret. And while Gov. Nikki Haley delivered a more upbeat Republican response – and said both parties deserve blame for problems in Washington — Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus followed by saying in a statement, “The one thing the president made clear tonight is that the next ten months will be all about ensuring he is succeeded by Hillary Clinton, who gives his failed presidency an ‘A’ grade and wants to take his divisive, left-wing agenda to the next level.”
And if Trump was the unnamed foil of Obama’s vision of a better politics, he was also only the most obvious symbol of a harsher, more smash-mouth political style that has taken hold in both presidential primaries in part because, seven years into his presidency, voters are responding to pessimism.
Obama’s assertion that “anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction,” was as much a rejection of Bernie Sanders’ rhetoric of a nation increasingly failing to meet the needs of the 99 percent as it was a rejection of Trump’s insistence that China, Mexico and even Japan are taking advantage of the United States economically.
He rejected Marco Rubio’s assessment of America’s global standing, as well as Trump’s claim that “our country doesn’t win any more.”
“I told you earlier all the talk of America’s economic decline is political hot air,” Obama said. “Well, so is all the rhetoric you hear about our enemies getting stronger and America getting weaker.”
His rejoinder was the same both to Ted Cruz’s promise to bomb the Middle East thoroughly enough to find out “if sand can glow in the dark” and to Trump’s promise to “bomb the hell out of ISIS.
“Our answer needs to be more than tough talk or calls to carpet bomb civilians. That may work as a TV sound bite, but it doesn’t pass muster on the world stage,” the president said.
Obama also had a response to Ben Carson’s opinion that a Muslim should not be president, as well as Trump’s -- and perhaps to the entire Republican Party’s desire for the president to utter the words “radical Islamic terrorism.”
“When politicians insult Muslims – whether abroad or our fellow citizens when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid is called named, that doesn’t make us safer,” he said.
Trump, for one, was not chastened by the address to adopt a loftier tone. He tweeted, “The #SOTU speech is really boring, slow, lethargic - very hard to watch!”
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