Jeffrey A. Setaro

Let me preface this by saying I didn’t watch the President’s speech last night. Frankly I’ve been been watching him for roughly two years now and I’m tired of his hollow rhetoric. I did read through the transcript this morning though… it reads more like campaign speech than a State of the Union address. Worse still there’s nothing new there, it’s the same tired rhetoric and buck passing we’ve been hearing all long… more big government boondoggles, but nothing about encouraging private sector investment and job creation. That’s what’s needed to get the economy going again, everything he’s proposing will just prolong the agony.

The really sad part of it is a year into his administration and he’s still campaigning… Never mind that he’s hard left ideologue, President Obama’s single biggest failing is that he still hasn’t made the transition from candidate to President… even his supporters are becoming disillusioned over his lack of leadership:

When Al Melquist voted for Barack Obama in 2008, the unemployed software engineer was drawn to the politician’s charisma and promise of solutions for the nation’s economic woes and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In the time since, Melquist has given up looking for work. The house in Las Vegas where he lived sits empty and bank-owned after his landlord didn’t make mortgage payments for 13 months. He is burning through his savings and doing Web site work to make ends meet for his family of five, while working on his own startup.

Millions of Americans like Melquist tuned in to the president’s State of the Union address Wednesday night, aching for solutions but wary – aware that in too many places voters are no better off today than when they lifted Obama into the White House.

Many have become so disillusioned with their economic situations that they are tired of all the politics and promises and want action.

“He just says so many things,” the 41-year-old Melquist said of Obama. “I just don’t trust what he says is actually going to happen.”

For me the defining moment was his attack on the Supreme Court (emphasis mine):

Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong.

It’s no surprise Justice Alito was seen shaking his and and mouthing “not true” during the President speech… As Linda Greenhouse explains:

The law that Congress enacted in the populist days of the early 20th century prohibited direct corporate contributions to political campaigns. That law was not at issue in the Citizens United case, and is still on the books. Rather, the court struck down a more complicated statute that barred corporations and unions from spending money directly from their treasuries — as opposed to their political action committees — on television advertising to urge a vote for or against a federal candidate in the period immediately before the election.

The Court’s decision doesn’t reverse a century of law, the statute the Court ruled on was enacted as part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law only about decade ago… It doesn’t change the rules on corporate contributions to political campaigns, foreign or otherwise, at all. The only issue the Court addressed was whether corporations… or unions could pay for television ads in support of or in opposition to  a federal candidate in the period immediately before an election. Quite honestly I don’t think the Court’s decision is going to have much of an effect… McCain-Feingold didn’t take special interest money out politics, it just moved it further into the shadows by forcing corporations and unions to create political action committees or 527 groups.

Anyway that’s my two cents. Ed Morrissey takes look at Pres. Obama’s 10 whoppers from the SOTU address here. Rochester Conservative has full dissection of the President’s speech here, James Pethokoukis calls it “A limited speech by a constrained president” and The New York Sun takes the President to task for his attack on the Supreme Court here.

Update: Paul Mirengoff has more about the Citizen’s United case over at Power Line.