Entering the Lion's Den

Obama's State of the Union speech this week had moments that were reminiscent of his 2008 campaign. He had that same fiery tone and determination, and used history as a great motivator for why we must act. If you listened to the media, his campaign and the Democratic party was in trouble. Obama's poll numbers have definitely dropped since he took office, but the decline was more a reflection of reality than any failures on his part.

At the risk of stating the obvious, Obama is at his best when he delivers a live prepared speech directly to the American people. This is not to say he's only a good speaker or that he's all talk and no action. Speeches give him a platform to present his vision unfiltered from the media. His State of the Union was a great example of him portraying his perspective of the past year. He did a great job of mixing new policy initiatives with a fiery inspirational beginning and end.

Past presidents have put a positive spin on bad years ("The State of the Union is strong" when it was anything but), but Obama from the very beginning of his speech never once tried to pretend things were good. He laid out the facts and basically put the ball in Congress' court to get things done. He specifically went after the Republicans, challenging them to come up with practical alternatives instead of just voting down every single Democratic proposal.

Which brings us to the video in this post. I remember him saying he'd meet with the Republican caucus, but it seems that engaging with them in an outright Q&A is about as ballsy as dissing the Supreme Court when they're a few feet away (which he did on Wednesday!).

Many people expect the economy to take a turn for the better in the early part of this year. If that happens, Obama will have a lot more leverage to get some things done and the Democrats may even win some more seats in Congress.

It's interesting that after a full year of Obama's presidency, we still don't really know how it will turn out. He's trying to make decisions that won't see results until the next generation, but he was elected in a generation that uses Facebook, YouTube and text messaging - a generation that demands instantaneous gratification and instant results.