President Obama, in final State of the Union speech, touches on accomplishments, looks toward future

Raising the “hope and change” themes that helped sweep him into the White House eight years ago, President Obama used his seventh and final State of the Union address to celebrate how far America has come since he took office and to encourage Americans to embrace the future with open arms.

President Obama delivers the State of the Union address as House Speaker Paul Ryan and Vice President Biden look on.

Over the course of the one-hour address Obama explained how he would leave office with the U.S. in better shape — focusing on a laundry list of accomplishments like the growing economy, shrinking income inequality and keeping America safe from terrorism — and emphasized that, despite ever-present trouble in the world, there was no need to fear the future.

 

“America has been through big changes before,” Obama said. “Each time, there have been those who told us to fear the future; who claimed we could slam the brakes on change, promising to restore past glory if we just got some group or idea that was threatening America under control.”

“And each time, we overcame those fears,” he said. “We made change work for us, always extending America’s promise outward, to the next frontier, to more and more people. And because we did — because we saw opportunity where others saw only peril — we emerged stronger and better than before.”

 

But “such progress is not inevitable,” Obama warned, in a subtle nod to the upcoming 2016 election.

“It is the result of choices we make together,” he said. “Will we respond to the changes of our time with fear, turning inward as a nation, and turning against each other as a people? Or will we face the future with confidence in who we are, what we stand for, and the incredible things we can do together?”

Throughout the speech, Obama defended his record, although sometimes briefly, highlighting many of his biggest accomplishments — including the enactment and judicial upholding of Obamacare, the killing of Osama bin Laden, the resuscitation of the economy and the Iran nuclear deal.

Obama also referenced the accomplishments his administration achieved in just the past 12 months, such as the re-launch of diplomatic relations with Cuba, a global climate pact, an Asia-Pacific trade deal and a budget deal with the Republican-led Congress.
But he largely avoided most of the flashpoint topics that created the most controversy during his presidency.
Obama referred to gun violence only once — using the word “gun” just one time — over the course of the speech, despite an enormous effort in recent weeks to focus on gun control, including the announcement just days earlier of a slew of controversial executive actions on the matter.

He also used the words “immigration” and “refugee” just once each, apparently straying from topics that Republican candidates, including GOP front-runner Donald Trump, have consistently used as political red meat on the campaign trail.
In addition, he totally skipped over the biggest news item of the day out of the Middle East — that Iran had detained 10 U.S. sailors after a pair of Navy patrol boats drifted into its waters.
Instead, he kept to his unifying message and appeared to reject many of the claims made by Trump, of American decline at home and abroad, on the campaign trail.

“All the talk of America’s economic decline is political hot air,” Obama said to grand applause from Democrats in attendance. “So is all the rhetoric you hear about our enemies getting stronger and America getting weaker. The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. It’s not even close.”
Obama, however, also expressed regret over the partisanship that has defined his two terms in office, before doubling down on the need for political unity if the nation wants to move forward.
“What I’m asking for is hard. It’s easier to be cynical; to accept that change isn’t possible, and politics is hopeless, and to believe that our voices and actions don’t matter,” he said. “But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future.”

"As frustration grows, there will be voices urging us to fall back into tribes, to scapegoat fellow citizens who don’t look like us, or pray like us, or vote like we do, or share the same background,” he said.
“Democracy does require basic bonds of trust between its citizens. It doesn’t work if we think the people who disagree with us are all motivated by malice, or that our political opponents are unpatriotic,” Obama said.
“Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get attention,” he said before offering a prescription — and an uplifting trope that resembled a calling card for his desired legacy.

“The future we want … is within our reach. But it will only happen if we work together. It will only happen if we can have rational, constructive debates,” Obama said.
“It will only happen if we fix our politics,” he said.
Despite Obama having ignored the refugee issue and of gay marriage, both topics were represented in the form of the President’s personal guests.

Among them were Refaai Hamo, a Syrian scientist who received refugee status and moved to Troy, Mich., after his wife and daughter were killed in a missile strike; and Jim Obergefell, the plaintiff in the historic Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in the U.S.
Also in attendance was Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue gay marriage licenses, who was a personal guest of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
But just as noteworthy were those who were not in attendance.

Obama somberly honored the countless victims of gun violence in the U.S. during his address by leaving a seat empty in the House chamber.
The empty seat, in First Lady Michelle Obama's box, was meant to "illustrate the victims of gun violence who no longer have a voice," the White House said earlier this week.
The NRA seized on the gesture by preemptively announcing a formal rebuttal to Obama’s speech, before it even occurred, that will air Wednesday morning.

Republicans, for their part, didn’t wait as long.
In the party’s official response to the State of the Union, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley took a surprisingly soft tone, urging Americans to resist “the siren call of the angriest voices” in how it treats immigrants — an apparent rejoinder to the controversial proposal by Trump and other 2016 GOP candidates to build a wall on the border with Mexico and ban Muslims from entering the U.S.
Haley, herself the U.S.-born daughter of Indian immigrants, did not mention any of her party’s candidates by name but doubled down on a claim that the U.S. is facing the most dangerous security threat since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices,” she said in excerpts of her remarks released early by Republicans. “We must resist that temptation.”
Nobody who works hard and follows the laws “should ever feel unwelcome in this country,” she added.

With News Wire Services