From NJ Hotline, “President Obama‘s State of the Union honed in on many of the themes that have characterized his post-election agenda thus far: A focus on the coalition of voters who delivered him a second term and a critique of a Congress he sees as both obstructionist and dysfunctional. Most of the speech, like all SOTUs, was the proverbial list of ill-fated proposals and soon-to-be-forgotten promises. Obama’s calls for an increase to the minimum wage and universal preschool stood out as strong appeals to the coalition that elected him last November. Obama’s crescendo came on the issue of guns. SOTU HIGHLIGHT…when the President acknowledged Desiline Victor, a 102-year-old woman who waited three hours to vote in Florida this past election. THE SOTU WORD BY WORD Dueling word clouds
CLICHES NJ writes, “State of the Union addresses are rarely memorable, in part because they’re basically laundry lists of proposals combined with a memo about where the country stands. In fact, between Thomas Jefferson and William Howard Taft, presidents didn’t give a SOTU speech. They just sent their assessment of the country’s condition up to Capitol Hill. Woodrow Wilson was the first to give an address. And the speech didn’t really become a big deal until Lyndon Johnson moved it from noon to prime time in 1965. Take a look at our LIST and see how many of these overused clichés Obama managed to hit during last night’s broadcast.”
