At 3am on 25 February, I found myself doing something I cannot recall ever doing before. It took me a moment to realise that I was clapping on my own at the end of an hour-long speech I had just witnessed on my TV. But why? Well, I guess the answer is that I must have been pretty impressed by President Obama’s first speech to a joint session of Congress – the traditional first-term president’s equivalent to the State of the Union address.
And indeed, it was treated like one by the major broadcast and print media in the US. In fact, President Obama’s speech was seen by viewers in more than 37 million US homes, the third largest TV audience to ever witness such an address. Even here in Ireland I was able to see the speech live on three different channels. This unprecedented interest in President Obama’s first major speech after his inauguration underscores both the American and worldwide interest in his plan to deal with the economic recession.
While it remains to be seen if Obama will be as effective as Franklin D Roosevelt was in his famous and reassuring fireside chats to an American public reeling from the devastating effects of a worldwide depression, I think he delivered the kind of message that we were so desperately hungry for.
His speech to Congress added some layers of detail that were missing from his relatively brief 18-minute inaugural address, in which he challenged those “who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans”. One month later, having already achieved his top priority – the $800bn economic stimulus bill – President Obama proceeded to lay out his other ‘big’ plans for improving education, creating jobs through rebuilding America’s infrastructure and developing energy independence, not to mention Medicare and social security reform, a transparent federal budget and plans to help beleaguered US homeowners.
The president acknowledged Americans anger towards Wall Street but also noted that many of them had also played a role by using credit recklessly and spending beyond their means. He then sought to convince us that the only way to avoid making the current economic crisis worse may be to commit more taxpayer money to cleaning up Wall Street’s financial mess. He refrained from using partisan rhetoric during his speech, and instead encouraged Republicans to take the “carrot” he was offering and rise above partisan politics to work with him in developing bipartisan solutions for the many problems the country faces. But Obama also showed his Republican opponents the “stick” by giving his audience a powerful critique of the policies of the past eight years.
I thought Obama did an excellent job of making the case for using the current economic crisis to make other far-reaching changes and reforms by creating “opportunity from ordeal”. He closed his speech by reminding Americans that the world was watching, saying: “As we stand at this crossroads of history, the eyes of all people in all nations are once again upon us, watching to see what we do with this moment, waiting for us to lead.” One thing’s for sure – Obama is leading.
Charles Laffiteau is a lifelong US Republican from Dallas, Texas who is currently pursuing a PhD research programme in Environmental Studies at Dublin City University
