The question on every political junkie's lips today is: "What did you think of Obama's first State Of The Union speech?" I don't have a single answer to that question, personally. I have some random reactions to different parts of the speech, so you'll have to forgive me for offering up such a mixed bag -- but then in my defense, I have to say the speech itself was a rather mixed bag.

Every president tries to pre-spin their speeches as "not a laundry list," and then winds up reading a laundry list anyway. I'm not sure what the point of this game is, but both sides do it equally. I'm not even sure why a laundry list is supposed to be a bad thing, unless it has to do with connotations of being boring. When you get right down to it, it's actually not even a "laundry list," for a couple reasons. One, nobody uses laundry lists these days. I've gone my entire life without ever laying eyes on a piece of paper that could be called a "laundry" list. When doing the laundry, who really needs a list? And secondly, a presidential State Of The Union is simply not akin to a laundry list, since the president is not exactly "airing his dirty laundry in public" or giving Congress instructions on how much starch to use when cleaning his legislative laundry.

The real term we should all be using is a "grocery shopping list," when you think about it. The president is going to the Congressional store with a list of what he would like on America's table. He reads the list, and then Congress attempts to put some of it in his shopping cart. This metaphor has a lot more going for it, is much more versatile, and everybody's used a shopping list at some point or another.

Continue Reading »

The news from the White House for the past week, post-Massachusetts and pre-State-Of-The-Union, has had a decidedly Populist bent to it. So, when thinking about how to cover President Obama's first official yearly address to a joint session of Congress (last year's didn't count, officially), I thought it would be appropriate to check in with the Populist Caucus once again.

I first interviewed the Chairman of the Populist Caucus last year (Democratic Representative Bruce Braley, from Iowa) soon after their formation. He was graciously willing to talk to me today, and even suggested doing two interviews -- one before and one after the speech. So we will be presenting this article in two parts, which isn't exactly "liveblogging," but is about as close as you can get with someone who will actually be sitting in the room listening to President Obama speak tonight. I encourage everyone to check back here after the speech is over, to read Braley's immediate reactions to what Obama had to say.

Continue Reading »

Today we are turning the column over to a State Of The Union speech from the past, to get everyone in the spirit for President Obama's first official State Of The Union speech tomorrow night.

It was hard to choose which speech to run, because I found a treasure trove of speech transcripts online (all the way back to George Washington in 1790), and therefore spent a few hours digging through many of them. I almost ran a speech from Teddy Roosevelt, just because of all the trust-busting language, but anyone who thinks Bill Clinton gave long speeches should check out one of Teddy's (if you think you've got the stamina for it).

Continue Reading »

There has been an interesting alignment which has slowly happened over the past year, between two groups not normally in agreement -- inside-the-Beltway mainstream media types, and the bloggy Left. This alignment has occurred not in favor of some issue or another, but rather against a certain movement: the Tea Parties. Both the Serious Persons in the media, and pretty much the entire Left, have agreed that the proper thing to do with the Tea Partiers is to mock them, in the hopes that they'll go away soon. This, I fear, is a mistake, and it could be a costly one indeed for the Democratic Party.

Allow me to explain, because I'm about to stake out a position here that may not make me many friends. The Tea Party movement is currently hard to define and hard to pin down on the issues, but last month there was an extraordinary Wall Street Journal / NBC News poll which showed the Tea Party was seen more favorably than either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. Meaning that the sentiments driving the Tea Party movement are a lot broader than anyone in Washington may fully realize.

Continue Reading »

I have to start off today apologizing to my Huffington Post readers for possibly wearing out my welcome there this week, since this will be my fourth post in as many days there. But it's been a heckuva week, that's my excuse. I started with two columns on the anniversary of Barack Obama's Inauguration and his first year in office (one with my thoughts, and one with two extraordinary essays from young Americans I attended the Inauguration with). But, while I was wallowing in the calendar, other things were happening.

That's right. This column was moved to 12:05 in the morning, and Jay Leno announced he'd be taking over the normal Friday Talking Points column.

Continue Reading »

Today could be a pivotal moment in the administration of President Barack Obama. Because the White House seems to have decided that the theme of next week's State Of The Union address is going to be: "Populism."

To which, I say: it's about time.

It's about time to start fighting for the little guy and against the fat cats. It's about time to start fighting, when it comes right down to it.

To say, however, that this is what I expected Obama to do would be to monumentally overstate what my expectations were. What I really expected the White House's reaction to losing Ted Kennedy's Senate seat was the standard Democratic response to (sadly) just about everything -- moving further to the right. I expected the White House to sit down, read the polls which said "voters are angry about Democratic weakness," and immediately decide that they had to weaken their agenda even further.

It defies logic, but it's what Democrats usually do. Which is why it's exactly what I expected Obama to do.

Continue Reading »

Today marks the one-year anniversary of President Barack Hussein Obama's term in office. I thought long and hard about how to mark this event, especially since I had travelled to Washington, D.C. myself last year, in order to attend Obama's Inauguration. Now, I know that there are other subjects (cough, cough... Massachusetts... cough) I should be writing about today. But the calendar is the calendar, and we'll certainly have enough time in the future to discuss the coming year and what it all means. For today, though, I'd like to take a look back. And a look forward, in two very different ways.

Because I am turning the column over today to two people I shared the Inaugural Day experience with, both of whom are less than half my age. I and my wife stayed with a D.C. friend who attended the Inauguration with us, who also brought along her high-school-age daughter. I also met up with a college student I know in the region, for lunch, after the big ceremony was over.

I approached each of them recently with a fairly wide-open invitation: write about what the Inauguration meant to you. No limits, just write what you felt. I got back two very different essays, and I would like to beg your indulgence to read both of them, as I think they are representative of what a lot of young Americans are thinking, and continue to think, about President Barack Obama. And of how they see the future.

Continue Reading »

It is significant, to me at least, that President Barack Obama's true first anniversary in office is about to be overshadowed by a special election to fill a Senate seat in Massachusetts. Think about it for a minute -- Obama's milestones have been obsessively tracked by the media, with countless stories about his "first 100 days" in office (and even quite a few on his "first 50 days"), lots of followup "second 100 days" articles, and then a truly bizarre paroxysm of stories on the anniversary of his election night. But as we approach the real milestone, tomorrow at noon (East Coast time), any "first year" stories are likely to be buried beneath microscopic analysis of whatever happens tonight in the Bay State. This is a stunning turnaround from not just a year ago, but from a few months ago. And, as I said, it is significant, because many are now left wondering: how did we get here? How did Obama get to the point he occupies now, from where he was a year ago?

Good question. The answer, in my humble opinion, is that the infamous presidential "bubble" has, sadly, descended over Obama's White House. Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, probably had the most impenetrable presidential bubble of modern times (although a good argument can be made for his father, as well), but this is a danger virtually every president faces. Fresh new presidents enter office, convinced that they will be able to keep in touch with "The People," only to soon discover that safety and security (and the Washington "who gets invited to what party" culture) slowly smothers these "common man" ambitions. President Bill Clinton famously drove the Secret Service crazy by not only jogging, but stopping off at any handy McDonald's along the way. But even that faded, over time.

Continue Reading »

[Seeing as how today is Martin Luther King Day, and also how the rest of this week will be taken up with marking President Barack Obama's first year in office; I thought that it was fitting to run, in lieu of a column today, King's acceptance speech in Oslo for the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. Here's hoping everyone had a good MLK Day, and if you can't volunteer for some reason or another, at least make a donation for the victims of the Haitian earthquake fund in King's honor today. Without further ado, we hereby present the words of Nobel Laureate Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior.]

-- Chris Weigant

December 10, 1964, Oslo, Norway

I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when twenty-two million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice. I accept this award in behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice.

Continue Reading »

What a week!

Beginning the week, mere hours after last week's article went to press, was the story of Harry Reid's gaffe on the campaign trail last year. Following closely on this was Rod Blagojevich, cramming his foot so far into his mouth his ankle was no longer visible.

Much of the frenzied activity took place this week behind closed doors (and most decidedly not on C-SPAN), as healthcare reform entered its final negotiating phase. President Obama even decided to get involved, meaning we must be almost at the end of the fight. Ahem.

This fight, I should mention, may be speeded up considerably, due to tanking poll numbers for the Democratic candidate for the Senate in Massachusetts, but we'll get to these pathetic details in a bit.

Continue Reading »