A successful SOTU address by a President struggling to keep hope alive.

I will answer my own question – yes, but I hope I am proven wrong.

There will be some individuals that, in spite of Obama’s attempts last night to outline and explain his initiatives on health care, the economy, job creation, financial market regulation, etc., will still pretend he danced around the issues, or that he was vague even when he was specific in addressing the aforementioned issues.

I won’t speak to how this will change the political game moving forward.

But I do think that he did a couple of things that I really liked -

1) If you see ‘em point ‘em out. If your  name was not up in that speech, be lucky.  He called it like he saw it.  Accountability.  He did not mince words for Republicans or Democrats, Congress or the Supreme Court Justices, banks or business corporations.  I think it was a good to see him day what needed to be said, realizing he could still maintain who he is as a person.  When it came down to it, you realized he was tying lack of progress to a highly politicized and ineffective Congress.  The best line of the night was the one regarding the “Deficit of trust” that the American people had with government, and how the Congressional politicking has only been adding to it.

2) Keep it 100. People love to throw around cheap shots, and critiques may like to throw around assertions hoping that one sticks to the wall of relevancy.  You know, talking about the ineffectiveness of the president because the deficit has gone up since Obama took office.  But Obama was like wait a minute, before he even got into office, this deficit was projected to continue increasing well into the term of the next president after Bush.  And other instances like this throughout the speech, he made sure to be clear about the challenges we faced, but also where the true root of these problems lay.

3) No Negro Dialect. No, but seriously.  When is Obama not a great orator?  I think he balanced the needs to be strict and stern, while simultaneously being witty and off-the cuff, and even at times playful with the same people he had just called out.  The speech was straightforward, but highlighted his understanding of the issues while also keeping it basic enough to grasp in an hour.

4) Now we know…and knowing is half the battle. Obama presented details.  The majority of his speech seemed to focus on domestic issues, which I think has been his biggest issue as a leader, because people want to see immediate answers to the problems they experience daily.  He was very clear in my opinion about how he chose to address economic growth and job creation.  The other parts of the speech were just as specific, with maybe the section on national security.  But whether he was talking about new education benefits, or the need to move forward on the health care that CBO said would reduce the deficit over 10 years, or even if he was talking about the spending cut on discretionary spending and re-instituting pay-as-you-go, I felt he brought in very specific provisions that he supported.

I felt like I had just left church after watching that last night.  He spoke the truth, and you just knew it was the truth even if others would come to steal, kill, or destroy that knowledge.  No amount of sour faces or head shaking or side-eyes could discredit the truth and conviction from which Obama spoke.

And I will say that Obama’s first State of the Union did exactly what it was supposed to – it reassured us that our president was not oblivious to the problems domestically, nor was he without solutions.  We will see if the message has any impact on the Congress, and on Americans who have sat idly by waiting for change.

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