PRESIDENT PAINTS STARK PICTURE OF STATE OF THE UNION / THE FINANCIAL TIMES ( RECOMMENDED READING )

President recalls Sputnik era to arrest economic decline

By Richard McGregor in Washington

Published: January 26 2011 04:09


Barack Obama painted a stark and, at times, grim picture of the challenges facing the US, in education, infrastructure and politics, in an address to Congress leavened with an uplifting appeal to American traditions of innovation, risk-taking and public service.


Grasping to sum up the country’s perilous position, the US president said the country was facing its “Sputnik moment”, a reference to the alarm felt in 1957 when the former Soviet Union launched the first orbiting satellite.“We need to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world,” he said.


Mr Obama’s annual State of the Union address took place in a combative but fragile political landscape, less than three months after the Democratic party’s massive midterm election loss, weeks after the shooting of an Arizona Congresswomen and days after the visit of the Chinese president, Hu Jintao.


Congressmen and women and senators from both parties sat side-by-side in the chamber in wake of the fallout of the shootings in Tucson, giving the address a bipartisan atmosphere rarely on recent display in US politics.


“Amid all the noise and passions and rancour of our public debate, Tucson reminded us that no matter who we are or where we come from, each of us is a part of something greater – something more consequential than party or political preference,” he said.


His change in tone also reflects the boost his own popularity received from his tax deal with Republicans late last year, a trend which could gain momentum in the new Congress if any spirit of bipartisan deal making lingers.


Mr Obama’s speech was sprinkled with offers to work with the Republicans, who now control the House of Representatives, including on healthcare, deficit reduction and corporate tax.


“If you have ideas about how to improve this [healthcare] law by making care better or more affordable, I am eager to work with you,” he said.


But Mr Obama himself offered only modest proposals of his own to reduce the bulging deficit, even as he acknowledged the areas in which real cuts would have to come.


On social security, he appeared to dismiss any immediate meaningful reform saying any changes couldn’t put at risk “current retirees, the most vulnerable, or people with disabilities” nor slash benefits for future generations and subject retirement income “to the whims of the stock market.”

The president reaffirmed US policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea, supported the “democratic aspirations” of protesters in Tunisia and offered to revive reforms to immigration laws.


But the substance of his address was strikingly domestic. While relatively little time was devoted to foreign policy, much was made of the rising economic power of the rest of the world.


The rhetorical centrepiece of the speech was about how the US could no longer keep up with its global competitors. More so than his predecessors have in previous such presidential speeches, he listed areas where the US had fallen behind the rest of the world, to South Korea in internet penetration, to Europe in infrastructure and to China in trains and airports.


“When our own engineers graded our nation’s infrastructure,” he said, “they gave us a ‘D’.”


“Over the next 10 years, nearly half of all new jobs will require education that goes beyond a high school degree. And yet, as many as a quarter of our students aren’t even finishing high school.”


“And over the next 10 years, with so many Baby Boomers retiring from our classrooms, we want to prepare 100,000 new teachers in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.”


Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011