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Barack Obama will use his annual state of the union speech to launch his 2012 re-
election campaign, portraying himself as the champion of working-class America
against the small, wealthy elite he claims is protected by the Republicans. As the
Republicans tore strips off one another over tax and wealth this week in Florida,
the president will argue in his televised address to the nation that America is a
land of opportunity and everyone deserves a fair chance, not just a privileged few.
He will warn that, in the months left before the election, he will seek to work with
Congress, but if Republicans engage in “obstructionism”, as the White House
claims they did throughout last year, he will confront them and, if necessary, by-
pass them. In excerpts released in advance by the White House, Obama used some
of his starkest language yet in trying to draw a distinction between Democrats and
a new generation of Republicans who have shifted to the right, influenced by the
Tea Part movement. His words will open him up to accusations from the Republi-
cans currently vying for their party’s nomination that he is an advocate of ‘class
warfare’. The Republican chosen to make the response, Indiana governor Mitch
Daniels, also issued excerpts of the rebuttal in advance. His speech will say that
Obama’s blaming of Republican obstructionism were unfair and untrue. The Re-
publicans, “have passed bills to reduce borrowing, reform entitlements, and en-
courage new job creation, only to be shot down nearly time and again by the pres-
ident and his Democrat Senate allies,” Daniels will say. Daniels is to accuse
Obama of sowing discord with his message of a wealthy elite and a working-class
barely getting by. “No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its
constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating
others,” Daniels said, in excerpts from his speech released in advance. In one
strikingly partisan passage, to be delivered in front of both the Senate and the
House, Obama said the defining issue of the present time is how to keep the pro-
mise of America alive. “No challenge is more urgent. No debate is more important.
We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really
well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an
economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and
everyone plays by the same set of rules.” In a reprisal of his speech to the Demo-
cratic convention that first thrust him into the public eye in 2004, in which he
said there were no red states or blue states, he will say: “What’s at stake are not
Democratic values or Republican values, but American values. We have to re-
claim them.” He will set out his priorities not only for the coming year but for
a second term, mainly to boost jobs through rebuilding the manufacturing base,
developing the new energy sector and improving education. Obama, whose app-
roval ratings have improved marginally this month after being in the danger-
ously-low 40s, is to take the state of the union message on the road Wednesday
with a lengthy trip through the swing states that will determine on November
6 whether he will go down in history as a one-term president or is given another
four years. In spite of White House insistence that this is not a campaign trip
but an official one, he will take in Iowa, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Michigan
– all toss-up states. He will promise help for people struggling with the collapse
of the housing market and for students in higher education. “Think about the
America within our reach: a country that leads the world in educating its people.
An America that attracts a new generation of high-tech manufacturing and
high-paying jobs. A future where we’re in control of our own energy, and our
security and prosperity aren’t so tied to unstable parts of the world. An economy
built to last, where hard work pays off, and responsibility is rewarded,” he will
say, according to the excerpts released today. Obama, in a direct warning to the
senators and members of the House sitting in front of him, will say: “As long as
I’m president, I will work with anyone in this chamber to build on this momen-
tum. But I intend to fight obstruction with action, and I will oppose any effort to
return to the very same policies that brought on this economic crisis in the first
place.”
