Same State of the Union Address in 2011 and 2010 Emphasizes Obama Steps to Reelection

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Last Tuesday, President Obama delivered an elegant 2011 State of the Union Address¹ to the nation. However, the speech did not summarize the current fiscal, political, military, or economical status of our nation. Instead, the Address summarized Mr. Obama's vision of the future of America.

In it, he outlined three steps our nation (or government) needs to take to "out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world"¹:

• The first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation ... We’ll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology¹
• ... then we also have to win the race to educate our kids¹
• The third step in winning the future is rebuilding America¹

But, how different was this speech from the 2010 State of the Union Address²? Last year, the President began by summarizing the economic difficulties our country was facing. To help the  recovery, he proposed enacting fees on banks, financial and health care reform, and making business loans more available. He stressed that his administration cut taxes and made other improvements. Then, he outlined his additional steps for improving the nation:

• Next, we can put Americans to work today building the infrastructure of tomorrow. (Applause.) From the first railroads to the Interstate Highway System, our nation has always been built to compete. There's no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains, or the new factories that manufacture clean energy products²
• We should put more Americans to work building clean energy facilities²
• Next, we need to encourage American innovation²
• Fourth, we need to invest in the skills and education of our people²

While not in the same order this year, Mr. Obama stressed all 4 steps (except that he combined clean air and innovation together). Both the 2011 and 2010 Addresses included: Infrastructure, Education, and Innovation. In both speeches, he remain committed to enacting "clean-air" initiatives.

Thus, this comparison illustrates that the 2011 speech was simply a rewritten subset of the 2010 Address. It was not original and it did not indicate any change in governmental thinking or policy.

From these excerpts, we may conclude that the 2011 Version of the State of the Union Address was more of a campaign speech. It did not summarize anything new and simply reiterated his political views.

We may infer that the President is still trying to appease the union and student voting blocks, as well as special interest groups. Remember:

• Building the bridges, roads, and railroads involve union workers
• Investing in education directly benefits the teachers unions
• Making education more available benefits both U.S. and international students
• Many Wall Street new product initiatives involve clean air manufacturing and carbon credit taxation trading.
• Trying to retain foreign students being educated in American Colleges benefits illegal aliens.

Taking these points as a whole, we can easily see huge special interest voting blocks that would support the President's reelection bid in 2012. And, the sad part is that our American Taxpayer dollars will be used for these campaign purposes if the President gets his way.