During the first two years of his presidency, Barack Obama failed to sell his agenda to Americans in a manner that defied simplistic Republican depictions of him as a “big government” liberal. It cost his Democrats control of Congress.
Now, as he prepares to deliver his third and most important State of the Union address, the U.S. President is seeking to recast himself as a frugal centrist – all while calling for more government spending aimed specifically at bolstering American economic competitiveness.
In his annual address to Congress, broadcast live Tuesday night, Mr. Obama is expected to call for a government-led effort to improve American education, innovation and infrastructure. While he will pay heed to voter angst about the ballooning $14-trillion (U.S.) federal debt, deficit reduction may be only one of several main priorities outlined in the speech.
The balanced message is one the White House hopes can rally the broad coalition of progressive and centrist voters needed to ensure Mr. Obama’s re-election in 2012.
It has its risks. Arguing for the government’s mission to make sure American entrepreneurs are equipped to compete globally could play into renewed Republican efforts to brand Mr. Obama as a statist liberal.
“With all due respect to our Democratic friends, any time they want to spend, they call it investment,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told Fox News Sunday. “This is not a time to be looking at pumping up government spending in very many areas.”
While Mr. McConnell did not dismiss outright the proposals Mr. Obama is expected to unveil on Tuesday, it is clear that the newly empowered Republican bloc in Congress – dozens elected with Tea Party backing – will look upon them skeptically.
Still, it is not a lost cause. Mr. Obama has seen his approval rating move sharply higher on his smartly choreographed shift to the centre after November’s midterm elections, which saw Republicans regain control of the House of Representatives. In addition to compromising with the GOP on a two-year deal to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, Mr. Obama recently named JP Morgan executive Bill Daley, a moderate Democrat with a history of pushing pro-business policies, as his chief of staff.
Widely praised for striking a unifying tone in the wake of the Jan. 8 shooting in Tucson of congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others, the President has increasingly reminded Americans what they most liked about him in 2008.
Making the case for the role of government in nurturing U.S. competitiveness may also have become easier given last week’s state visit to Washington by Chinese President Hu Jintao, which vividly underscored for Americans the Red Dragon’s economic rise. And Friday’s appointment of General Electric chief Jeffrey Immelt to head a new presidential advisory council on jobs and competitiveness also strengthens Mr. Obama’s hand.
Mr. Immelt’s iconic company has emerged a beacon of innovation in the rusted-out U.S. manufacturing sector by investing heavily in advanced battery technology for electric vehicles and turbines to produce wind energy. Its omnipresent television ads tout its role in “the American Renewal.”
By making an ally out of Mr. Immelt – who personally donated twice as much to Republicans as Democrats during the campaign for November’s midterm congressional elections – Mr. Obama has taken another step toward shedding the anti-business image that had left CEOs feeling down on him.
The President’s Friday visit to a century-old GE plant, whose steam turbines are being exported to India, sought to remind Americans of GE’s century-plus record of reinvention. “We’re going back to [GE founder] Thomas Edison’s principles,” Mr. Obama said in Schenectady, N.Y. “We’re going to build stuff and invent stuff.”
That message has resonance with working-class Americans, perhaps the one constituency whose support Mr. Obama most needs to win back if he is to remain in the Oval Office after 2012. White, blue-collar voters helped him win in 2008 but punished Democrats in the midterm vote.
They could return to the Democratic fold if government intervention – such as the auto-sector bailouts of 2009 or the investments in education, innovation and infrastructure Mr. Obama will call for in Tuesday’s speech – is seen as paving the way for a resurgent manufacturing sector and putting “our economy into overdrive,” as the President promised on Friday.
The role for government Mr. Obama is expected to advocate in his State of the Union address also aims to reassure liberal Democrats that he has not thrown them overboard in his post-midterm rush to the centre.
Still, if the State of the Union speech falls flat, or the innovation agenda fails to produce near-term jobs, Mr. Obama may have to pivot yet again. And liberal Democrats may need life jackets, after all.
