Newspaper Page Text
SUNDAY, JANUARY 29,2012
Blue collar campaign
officially under way
after State of Union
By Doyle McManus
Los Angeles Times
The State of the Union address is a
political exercise in the best of times.
When a president is running for re-elec¬
tion and Congress is dominated by his
most bitter opponents, there’s even less
pretense than usual.
The State of the Union address that
President Obama delivered Tuesday
was, in a sense, the first formal speech
of his re-election campaign. It was his
chance to wedge himself into the noise
of the Republican primary campaign for
66 minutes of uninterrupted television
time, and he took advantage of it.
It was a blue-collar speech, aimed
largely at the swing voters Obama most
needs to woo — middle- and low
income workers still struggling in the
recession’s wake. His challenge was to
convince them that, on economic policy,
he is on their side.
To make his case, Obama even bor¬
rowed a few issues from the Republican
candidates who have been excoriating
him — an entire agenda of economic
populism that had, until now, received
relatively slight attention from the
White House. He called for a new drive
to attract manufacturing jobs back from
overseas, a major plank of Rick
Santorum’s campaign. He promised to
get tough on unfair trade practices in
China, a major plank of Mitt Romney’s
campaign. And he called for much more
domestic production of oil and gas, a
favorite plank of every Republican’s
campaign.
Until this year, when Obama talked
about creating jobs, they were often
“green jobs” — high-tech positions in
the nascent alternative energy industry.
But on Tuesday, the jobs the president
talked about most were in one of the
oldest manufacturing industries: auto¬
mobiles. “On the day I took office, our
auto industry was on the verge of col¬
lapse," he said. “Some even said we
should let it die. ... Tonight, the
American auto industry is back.”
That was a dig at Romney, who
opposed the federal rescue of GM and
Chrysler. (Although, to be fair, Romney
was proposing bankruptcy, not death.)
Obama even borrowed his newest slo¬
gan from Detroit: the U.S. economy, he
said, should be “built to last."
Sound familiar? "Built to Last” was
an advertising campaign for GMC,
maker of such behemoths as the Yukon
(nee Suburban) and Sierra. It was meant
to summon manly, blue-collar virtues:
reliability, ruggedness and power — a
long way from Obama’s more ethereal
“Audacity of Hope” in 2008.
On taxes too Obama made clear that
he sides firmly with the regular folks.
“You can call this class warfare all you
How best to judge a legacy?
The death of an aunt in
Cartersville reminded me
once again that when one
generation passes away,
one is forgotten. Aunt
Frances was the last in
my mother’s family and
was blessed to live for 96
years. She was a lady of
Southern heritage and a
genteel manner. Her
devotion to her son and
her husband was
exemplary.
Often I am reminded
that many situations 1 try
to recall are no longer
available to me. I cannot
go ask my parents, an
uncle, aunt or family
members to give me the
details I have forgotten
over the years. I can
recall, at times, the small
instances of growing up
and the adventures of
childhood, but, alas, I
forget so many details.
For some reason the
death of Joe Patemo
captured my attention this
week. I was not a football
fan and had no idea of his
celebrity and
accomplishments for
decades at Penn State.
The news of the crimes of
molestation by a coach
under him managed to
bring his reputation
tumbling down around
him.
This hardly seems fair
in my way of thinking.
Here was a revered
coach, with the
responsibility of training
want," the president said. "But asking a
billionaire to pay at least as much as his
secretary in taxes? Most Americans
would call that common sense.”
Obama said: “We don’t begrudge
financial success in this country; we
admire it. When Americans talk about
folks like me paying my fair share of
taxes, it’s not because they envy the
rich; it’s because ... somebody else has
to make up the difference.”
That was a direct answer to Romney,
who has accused Obama of practicing
“the politics of envy” or at least it
was as direct an answer as possible in a
speech pretending not to be a campaign
address.
By sheer good luck, Obama spoke on
the same day Romney belatedly
released two years of tax returns, reveal¬
ing that he paid only about 14 percent
of his $21.6 million in income in federal
taxes in 2010, a rate that is well below
that of most middle-class families.
What connects Obama’s two points of
greatest emphasis, manufacturing and
tax rates? As campaign issues, they both
play well among voters without a high
school education the blue-collar vot
ers Obama and other Democrats have
struggled to attract.
Last year, two Democratic academics
touched off a brief frenzy when they
wrote an article arguing that, with white
working-class voters shrinking as a per¬
centage of the electorate, Obama could
win re-election without them. But in the
current climate, Obama sees an oppor¬
tunity to win back the working class.
Romney, the OOP’s once and possi¬
bly future frontrunner, appears to have a
hard time appealing to low-income and
even to middle-class voters; in South
Carolina, the only income group he won
was households making more than
$200,000 a year.
It’s not clear that manufacturing can
really be the main engine of an overall
economic recovery; as Obama noted,
manufacturing jobs have been declining
for decades, and many of them will
never come back. There may have been
an element of economic nostalgia at
work there a yearning for the world
of George Romney, not Mitt. But that
was also part of the message: this isn’t
Obama the Harvard elitist, interested
only in new-age jobs, but a president
who will gladly settle for dirt-under-the
fingemail jobs too.
If there was any doubt whether
Obama intends to seek the votes of
white blue-collar workers, his State of
the Union speech put it to rest. He’s
running against Mitt Romney already
— on every front he can find.
Doyle McManus is a columnist for The
Los Angeles Times. Readers may send him
an e-mail at doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com.
3
JULIANNE BOLING
Columnist
athletes for decades. He
was a man of integrity
and principle. He
reported his assistant
coach to the proper
authorities and expected
campus police to do their
jobs as well. Did he do
enough? Who are we to
judge where the fault
lies? However, to erase
all his other
accomplishments seems a
sacrilege to me.
Do we not see this type
situation often, especially
in the political circles?
We have seen the mighty
in stature fall and take
their scrapes and censures
because of wrong
choices.
What about President
Nixon and his missing
tapes? What about
President Kennedy and
his affairs? What about
John Edwards and his
mistress? Will history be
fair? Will the good they
did be tarnished by their
mistakes?
With these thoughts
this week, 1 am reminded
of several words of
wisdom that have been
bestowed on me over the
years. First, “Never judge
a man until you have
walked a mile in his
shoes!" and second: “If
you think you are perfect,
look again." 1 would also
add, “Live your life so
your friends can defend
you, but never have to do
so!"
We are living in an age
when no one is safe from
the scrutiny of the media.
Before the ink dries on
divorce papers, affairs
have burned out, and even
before the sun goes
down, all the foibles and
mistakes made by people
of interest, or no interest
at all, will be reported.
With the number of
newscasts increasing and
stations going with full¬
time coverage there is
tremendous pressure to
be the first with a new
story.
While many aspects of
technology are helpful
— keeping in touch,
sharing opinions on
Facebook, being in
constant communication
with friends — not all
things need to be thought
or said. I go back to the
same one my mother
often used: “If you can’t
say something nice don’t
say anything.” I would
add to this: “Be fair, be
honest and be considerate
of others.”
Cumming resident Julianne
Boling's column appears
each Sunday.
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