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Showing posts from January, 2014

State of the Union Speech: blah blah blah - close Guantanamo - blah blah blah

In a follow up to my earlier post, I have to say, I think tonight's State of the Union was about as uneventful and uninspiring as I expected.  In essence there wasn't anything of substance. It was yet again another 'pep rally' speech by Obama.  The entire SOTU speech can be summed up in the following: Things are getting better America is becoming energy self-sufficient People with pre-existing conditions are now covered under Obama care We're winding down the wars If congress won't act, then I'll act alone (ok big guy, why haven't you done so over the past five years? Are you just 'now' ready to bring 'hope and change'?) I'm going to close Guantanamo (something he's promised for the past five years now and never does) America is great There you go. If you were at all worried about the future, or if you think the world is currently a mess, fear not for Obama says things are getting better and he's going to

Does the Presidential State of the Union Speech matter any longer?

So President Obama will be giving his Statue of the Union Speech tonight at 9pm Eastern.  The focus of the speech is supposedly going to be around a 'year of action', in which Obama will say that if he has to act alone without congressional support, he will. The question to me though, from a PR point-of-view, is does the SOTU speech even matter any longer? Ever since Bush these SOTU speeches are essentially 'morale' boosters. They hit on the same themes year-after-year: Our best years are ahead of us; If we come together there is nothing we can't do; The middle class is the backbone of America and we must support having a strong middle class.  And yet, year-after-year things stay the same or get worse, partisanship stays the same or gets worse and the middle class stays the same or gets worse. At a certain point does anyone really care what the President has to say after years of empty promises? In a CNN poll not to long ago 53 per cent of Americans sai