By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
No single individual built America on their own. We built it together. We have been, and always will be, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all; a nation with responsibilities to ourselves and with responsibilities to one another. Members of Congress, it is time for us to meet our responsibilities.
— Barack Obama, speech to the nation on 09/08/2011
While it’s doubtful that many Republicans watched the Presidents speech this week, I hope some of the disgruntled progressives did. They might have recognized the Obama they voted for. He spoke with passion and sincerity. He abandoned his professorial persona and used short no-nonsense words and repetition that even a child would understand to pummel the opposition party’s inaction.
He came out swinging against the obstruction that has kept him in a straightjacket for months on end, locking his options and stopping any progress he might propose for the commonwealth. In ‘Big Dog’ Bill Clinton-speak, he “felt the pain” of the average citizen spiraling downward into fiscal oblivion and called upon the nation to return to its democratic principals.
Once more braving the political field with unpopular news, Obama called for spending $447 billion in an attempt to boost our flagging economy. Facing the headwinds of Republican rhetoric, our “tax and spend” president called for more spending during a period when tossing Granma from the old folks home rather than supplementing her income is gaining in popularity. While the decision is still out on how well he did in turning the Pubs toward cooperation, let’s give him his due: he moved the national conversation away from enforced austerity and toward growth and opportunity, no easy task in our current political vacuum.