President Obama gave a compelling economic speech at Northwestern University where he highlighted his economic accomplishment. He also used the speech to highlight economic policies still lacking. The President then challenged Republicans to enter into a fact based debate America’s economic future. The speech was comprehensive in its breadth and assertive in tone.
President Obama comes out swinging with the facts
President Obama’s economic and social policies have been criticized on false premises, lies, and misinformation ad nauseum with no substantive pushback since the beginning of his presidency. The traditional media has at best being derelict and at worst complicit in distorting America’s economic reality. The Democratic Party in general has done a poor job in highlighting successes. Instead getting ahead of the Republican and traditional media effected negative polls, they mostly ran from substantive engagement that could have mitigated negative polls.
President Obama has lacked the consistency of informing in a full throated manner the reason for his policies. In his attempt to be non-confrontational, he refused to call out the fantasy that is Republican economic policies. This speech put it all together. He touted his economic policies which have been successful thus far. He acknowledged that while successful, the unbalanced nature of the recovery still needs much attention. Finally he slammed Republicans for not engaging in a fact based economic debate and for their continuous worship of trickle-down economics.
- Going forward he laid out goals to improve on the successes. They include the following.
- New investments in the energy and technologies that make America a magnet for good, middle-class jobs
- New investments in education that will make our workforce more skilled and competitive
- New reforms to health care that will cut costs for families and businesses
- New savings in our federal budget that get our fiscal house in order for future generations
- New rules for our financial system to protect consumers and prevent the kind of crisis we endured from happening again
This speech is way overdue. While bits and pieces have been heard throughout President Obama’s presidency, putting it together as he did in this speech is most effective. Fact based information is lacking from the discourse.