The President’s Post-Obama Agenda

[Valin]

National Review/The Corner:

Yuval Levin

January 21, 2015

 

The most striking thing about President Obama’s State of the Union address was how thoroughly and consciously it was disconnected from the political moment. The president addressed the Congress he will face for the remainder of his term, which is the most Republican Congress since 1929, but he didn’t really speak to that Congress or to the electorate that sent it. He made no mention of the recent congressional election and offered no reason to think its results would change his approach to his own job.

 

(Snip)

 

In this sense, the speech offers a model that Republicans can learn from. They, too, need to recognize that there will not be very much they can achieve in the next two years, since the president isn’t particularly interested in proving that Republicans “can govern.” They should certainly look for opportunities to make meaningful rightward progress where they can, but there won’t be many of those, and for the most part they too should use what power they now have to put forward an agenda that will speak to the public’s concerns and priorities.

 

Their conservative principles offer them much more to work with in crafting such policies than the Democrats now have. They need not offer only superficial talk but can propose a real agenda that would speak to voter worries about economic dynamism, mobility, the cost of living, and the prospects of the next generation. And their control of Congress enables them to actually force the Democrats to vote on the most popular of their ideas. A few of those may prove popular enough to be enacted now, even under this president. Most will be filibustered or vetoed. But putting them forward, getting Republicans in the habit of articulating the case for them, and getting the public used to hearing them, could make an enormous difference in preparing their party for winning the 2016 election and governing beyond it.