Obama pleads for political truce
US president Barack Obama blows a kiss to Michelle Obama before delivering the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, DC, last night. Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg
US president Barack Obama challenged a politically polarised Congress to support him in narrowing the gulf between rich and poor, breathing life into a struggling US economy and changing gun laws as he set out ambitious goals for his second term.
In his first State of the Union address since his re-election, Mr Obama pleaded with politicians and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to set aside their differences in an effort to introduce change and to avoid “the brinkmanship that stresses consumers and scares off investors”.
“The greatest nation on Earth cannot keep conducting its business by drifting from one manufactured crisis to the next,” he said in the annual State of the Union speech that lasted a little over an hour.
He filled in many of the policy gaps left by his rhetorical inaugural address last month, painting himself as the champion of the middle class and aiming to be a major legislative reformer in his second-term, despite not being in control of Congress.
“A growing economy that creates good, middle-class jobs – that must be the North Star that guides our efforts,” said the Democratic president in his fourth State of the Union address.
He described it as “our generation’s task” to “reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth – a rising, thriving middle class".
Mr Obama used the word "job" heavily in his 7,000-word speech, followed by tax, economy, deficit, energy and education, reflecting the focus of his address on the country's economic recovery.
The President was interrupted 86 times with fervently partisan applause from his own party supporters, including more than 30 standing ovations, a normal feature of the State of the Union speeches by US presidents.
The biggest response of the night came when Mr Obama referred to the effects of gun violence, noting the presence of a number of victims in the chamber for his speech, and later when he mentioned 102-year-old Desiline Victor who waited six hours to vote at a Miami polling station in last year's presidential election.
Naming victims of gun violence, including the families of 20 children murdered in the Newtown, Connecticut massacre in December, Mr Obama exhorted that they “deserve a simple vote," urging lawmakers to pass “common-sense” proposals, including background checks on all gun purchases.
“Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote. The families of Oak Creek and Tucson and Blacksburg, and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence; they deserve a simple vote,” he said to growing applause in a rare occasion last night where he showed his oratorical skills.
Democrats in the chamber and many Republican senators wore green ribbons to remember victims of the Newtown shootings.
In the face of Republican opposition to more federal spending, the President said that the country did not need bigger government but a “smarter” government, for “the many, and not just the few.” Not one of his proposals in his speech should increase the country’s deficit “by a single dime,” he said.
