Obama offers cheer in final union address
- By Wang Chong
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E-mail Global Times, January 14, 2016
The US economy has taken a turn for the better during his term, with the nation's unemployment rate falling by half. However, the middle class' income has not yet risen. The wealth gap is growing, and his idea of increasing taxes for the rich to provide subsidies to the poor will not be allowed to carry out.
More importantly, his diplomatic indecisiveness has led to an increasingly chaotic situation in the Middle East, the escalation of Syrian civil war, and the rise of the Islamic State. Although a deal was signed over the Iran nuclear issue, the Republicans do not recognize it, and believe that the White House was cheated by Tehran.
Obama said in the speech "The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith," adding that "our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get attention." This was clearly targeted at the anti-Muslim rhetoric of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.
Squabbling with Trump in this way, Obama isn't serving his own interests, but aiming at the 2016 presidential election. Unlike his predecessors, Obama didn't sum up his accomplishments in his final State of the Union address, but instead intended to set the agenda for this year's presidential elections and focus on the future. As he said, he wanted to "focus on the next five years, 10 years, and beyond."
This may sound like empty talk given the brutal reality. He is unable to set the topics for the election and Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton may also adopt a harsh stance on some matters to keep a distance from Obama. Obama won't leave much of a political legacy to Democrats. Probably his silence would be the biggest help for Democrats during the election, just as Jeb Bush didn't want to have connections with his brother.
The latest polls by NBC showed that Obama had an approval rate of 45 percent and disapproval rate of 54 percent, much higher than the 29 percent approval of former president George W. Bush. By saying he will "keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office," Obama appeared to make a declaration in which even he had no faith.
The author is deputy secretary general of the Charhar Institute, a think tank based in Beijing.
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