State of the Union 2011

Last night, President Obama delivered the State of the Union. Much has and will be said about its content and delivery - I personally like Nate Silver's tweet calling the speech "Smart. Safe. Centrist. Vague. Optimistic." As Silver has regularly reminded us, SOTU speeches tend not to propel the electorate significantly in either direction (even though 91% of those who tuned in gave the speech positive ratings). However, this speech in particular indicates how Obama intends to direct his attentions in the second half of his first term. Without laboring too heavily on the subject, I think it's important not to mislabel the meaning of the President's words.

Two minor mischaracterizations come to mind, all of 18 hours after Obama exited the Chamber. First, the speech has already been called "the most pro-business speech a Democrat has given," which to me suggests a favoring of business over government. This stereotypical dichotomy seems to exist in everyone's political worldview except for President Obama's, who struck me as more an industrialist than CEO-in-Chief last night. The President does not observe dueling forces between business and government, but rather a symbiosis. To wit:

Cutting the deficits by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may feel like you're flying high at first, but it won't take long before you'll feel the impact.

In other words, the President views public investment as a driving force behind the economy. So when Rachel Maddow describes Obama's speech as a "prayer to the free market," I think she's being hyperbolic. Critics will note the lack of any rhetoric concerning the foreclosure crisis and unemployment, and these criticisms are valid - as Robert Reich reminded us before and after the speech, corporate profits do not equal economic well-being. But let's not move forward with an impression that the President has abandoned his faith in the federal government to drive American progress.

The second slight mischaracterization, and the one more germane to this blog, is that Obama "ignored" climate change. While I do think that the conspicuously absence of the words "climate change" was a political calculation, we should not decouple Obama's words on modernizing our energy infrastructure from the movement to save the climate. The two are innately connected, and while the latter remains divisive and scientifically chaotic at best, the former is much closer to a technical challenge that our political and bureaucratic infrastructure can tackle. And President Obama continues to believe in the power of energy innovation to create jobs, rejuvenate American education and business, and to make cleaner our environment.

This vision for the future starts with innovation, tapping into the creativity and imagination of our people to create jobs and industries of the future. Instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's. It's why I challenged Congress to join me in setting a new goal: by 2035, 80% of America's electricity will come from clean energy sources.

If not for its eternally inspiring and true sentiments, the following would fast become a cliché: we are experiencing a new Sputnik moment. A decade before America landed a man on the moon, we had no idea how we were going to do it. The difficulties presented our decaying and poisonous energy infrastructure are daunting, but at least we have a President with a bold vision of American greatness to lead us forward in this next challenge.