The Stasis of the Union -- One Last Take

Pundits have summed up the latest State of the Union speech as a rousing call to action short on detail, and I suppose they're right, though I am always puzzled that people expect any more than histrionics from these speeches. With Congress and the Supreme Court huddled around the commander-in-chief, they are more show than tell. And that consummate showman, Barack Obama, like the daily dose of Oprah or Letterman, stirs not thought, but passion. You get your laughs from Letterman and your rouse from Obama.

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Obama, Incorporated

Barack Obama's 2011 State of the Union address was an organized sprawl of good intentions-a mostly fact-free summons to a new era of striving and achievement, and a solemn cheer to raise our spirits as we try to get there. And it did not fail to celebrate the American Dream.

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The State of the Union’s Schools: What We'd Like to Hear from Obama, But Won’t

While everyone knows that Barack Obama's State of the Union speech is likely to continue to push for the agenda that we've been facing in Race to the Top — privatization, more testing and test based "accountability," Arne Duncan's meanderings, more charter schools, and the other policies that have taken the nation's public schools further towards ruin than anything imagined when George W. Bush was President — we can at least try an imaginary alternative. Hence, the following wording from a State of the Union speech that we won't hear (at least not from the current President of the United States):

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