The President’s Second Inaugural Address

I find the reaction to the President’s Second Inaugural Address both surprising and puzzling.

Republican Speaker John Boehner in a speech to the Ripon Society following the President’s speech said:

Given what we heard yesterday about the president’s vision for his second term, it’s pretty clear to me that he knows he can’t do any of that as long as the House is controlled by Republicans… So we’re expecting over the next 22 months to be the focus of this administration as they attempt to annihilate the Republican Party. And let me just tell you, I do believe that is their goal — to just shove us into the dustbin of history. (Emphasis added)

Wow! Was it really that radical?

Paul Ryan, the Republican Chairman of the House Budget Committee and the architect of the Republican budgets declared on Meet the Press that:

[what] you saw his speech, say, at the inauguration, it leads us to conclude that he’s not looking to moderate, that he’s not looking to move to the middle…He’s looking to go farther to the left, and he wants to fight us every step of the way politically…

And Mitch McConnell the leader of Senate Republicans declared: 

One thing is clear from the president’s speech: The era of liberalism is back. His unabashedly far-left-of-center inaugural speech certainly brings back memories of the Democratic Party in ages past. If the President pursued that kind of agenda, obviously it’s not designed to bring us together, and certainly not designed to deal with the transcendent issue of our era, which is deficits and debt.

So let us look at the President’s speech and parse it: 

The text can be found here.

“Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone.”

Radical? Can even these avatars of the Right challenge this?

Well, the President goes on to say:

“For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.”

This may not be all that much to their liking but can they, or for that matter anyone, question it?

“For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. We believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class.”

Well, that may not suit them all that well, but do they really want to challenge this. It sure wouldn’t be a popular thing to do.

“We understand that outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time. We must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools, and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, reach higher. But while the means will change, our purpose endures…”

Republicans have long urged revamping our tax code. Surely they are in favor of remaking our government. What is radical here?

“We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit.”

This sounds like something right out of their playbook. What is their problem?

“We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.”

Ah! Radical! Republicans have long insisted (well, maybe not so long) that there is no “Climate Change” and if there is, it is not man made. So is this the radical stuff that upsets them so?

When John McCain was the Republican standard-bearer against the President in 2008 he said he would combat global warming with a cap-and-trade system to cut carbon emissions and increase use of nuclear power and alternative energy. Here is how the Seattle Times reported on McCain’s position.

“In a major environmental speech, Sen. John McCain on Monday said he would combat global warming with a cap-and-trade system to cut carbon emissions and increase use of nuclear power and alternative energy.”

Obama went on to say:

“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law…”

Well, this may be radical, but we know that more and more of the American people share this believe, and particularly our young people do. Are Republicans really ready to write off the views of future generations?

“No citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.”

Republicans have been very busy suppressing the vote, but surely they will not come right out and declare themselves against this principle.

“Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country.”

At a time when Republicans are rushing to show there willingness to reform our immigration laws and open a way to legalization of the 11 million in our midst, do they really want to declare this a radical idea?

“Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.”

Is this a radical idea? Are Republicans, whether they are against an assault weapons ban, or against better background checks, or any other measures to stem the daily slaughter of our citizens in our cities and towns, willing to stand against this proposition? Is it truly radical?

And what about a ban on assault weapons?

Here is what Ronald Reagan, their claimed icon, wrote in a joint letter with former Presidents Ford and Carter in 1994 to the House of Representatives urging them to vote in favor of the ban.

We are writing to urge your support for a ban on the domestic manufacture of military-style assault weapons. This is a matter of vital importance to the public safety. Although assault weapons account for less than 1% of the guns in circulation, they account for nearly 10% of the guns traced to crime. 

Every major law enforcement organization in America and dozens of leading labor, medical, religious, civil rights and civic groups support such a ban. Most importantly, poll after poll shows that the American public overwhelmingly support a ban on assault weapons. A 1993 CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll found that 77% of Americans support a ban on the manufacture, sale, and possession of semi-automatic assault guns, such as the AK-47. 

The 1989 import ban resulted in an impressive 40% drop in imported assault weapons traced to crime between 1989 and 1991, but the killing continues. Last year, a killer armed with two TEC9s killed eight people at a San Francisco law firm and wounded several others. During the past five years, more than 40 law enforcement officers have been killed or wounded in the line of duty by an assault weapon. 

While we recognize that assault weapon legislation will not stop all assault weapon crime, statistics prove that we can dry up the supply of these guns, making them less accessible to criminals. We urge you to listen to the American public and to the law enforcement community and support a ban on the further manufacture of these weapons.

And in 1991 Ronald Reagan wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Times endorsing the Brady Bill.

So what is so radical about the President’s vision as set forth in his inaugural? John Harwood writing in the New York Times states what I think should be obvious.

For all the talk that President Obama has shifted leftward, much of his early second-term energy seeks simply to preserve the status quo.

It is not the President who is the radical. It is the new Republican Party that is the radical party, seeking to push this country back to the days of President McKinley, or possibly even, in some ways, to an Antebellum period, as we once again hear the cries of secession from their Texas Republican governor, and theories of states rights that we long thought had been put to rest by the Civil War and the 14^th amendment.

The Republican Party is at a crossroad. Do they have their eyes on the future, or as David Frum, the former speechwriter for George W. Bush, has worried:

We Republicans may console ourselves that we did win two big victories in the recent past, 1994 and 2010. But those were off-year elections, when 60 percent of America stays home, and those who do turn out are the wealthier, the older, and the whiter. Exit polls indicate that 34 percent of the 2010 electorate was over age 60; in 2012, only 15 percent of voters were older than 65. The Republican success in those elections only underscores the bigger problem: the GOP is rapidly becoming the party of yesterday’s America.

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