Four surprising conclusions can be drawn from U.S. President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech:
1. He went softer on inequality than in previous speeches. Tuesday night's annual State of the Union speech was supposed to be Barack Obama's signature statement on economic inequality. So high were expectations that the president and his Democratic Party would aggressively attack the widening chasm between rich and poor that one hapless billionaire, Tom Perkins, actually predicted Nazi-style "Kristallnacht" against the super-rich.
But the billionaires needn't have worried. The word 'opportunity,' observes Alec MacGillis in the New Republic, "in general got a far harder workout than 'inequality' – nine mentions to one, which is significant given that 'opportunity is the term that conservatives so prefer to use when talking about class and mobility." Beyond the single use of the word "inequality," Mr. MacGillis notes, most of the President's language around the distribution of wealth is identical – or softer – than used in his five previous addresses to the nation. He actually seemed more cautious and conciliatory on the topic than he has been in the past.
A great shift to social-democratic policies of redistribution, whatever Mr. Obama may privately feel about them, is not going to be on the 2014 agenda, Mr. MacGillis notes. "Pundits should stop expecting him to turn into William Jennings Bryan for the rest of his presidency."
2. Hardly any Americans will benefit from his raised minimum wage. The headline announcement from the State of the Union speech, an executive order to raise the federal minimum wage from its current $7.25 (very low by standards of other Western nations) to $10.10, was meant to be the key policy in Mr. Obama's effort to reduce inequality. By bypassing the Republican-dominated Congress, he can put this measure into effect almost immediately.
But there's a catch: His minimum-wage increase will affect hardly any workers. While a Congressionally-mandated increase would give a raise to 17 million Americans currently earning the minimum wage, Mr. Obama's executive order can only affect people working on federal government contracts, and even then only to new or renewed contracts, not to existing ones. As such, according to the New York Times, "eventually it might affect several hundred thousand workers at most" – not enough to have a significant impact on inequality.
3. For the first time in his presidency, Mr. Obama has money to spend. What made this State of the Union address different from most of the previous addresses to the nation was that, for the first time, the United States is not struggling to escape an economic crisis. His previous speeches were full of talk of spending freezes, deficit cutting, belt tightening, emergency stimulus and the looming crisis in national debt.
Now the recovery has taken place, and Mr. Obama's narrative has changed. "For the first time since the early days of his presidency," Peter Beinart writes in The Atlantic, "President Obama offered an economic message freed from the crippling politics of austerity." After a quick mention of the need to further reduce the federal deficit, he spoke expansively of new programs in infrastructure, education and social services without any counterbalancing talk of the need to slash government spending.
There's another big reason for this new language: Last year was dominated by a showdown between Mr. Obama and the Republicans in Congress over the federal budget, culminating in a dramatic shutdown of the government engineered by right-wing Republicans. Americans reacted angrily, and the Republicans backed down, giving up all of their major budget demands. After that humiliating experience, the Republicans will be unlikely to use such measures again to block an expansionist budget (though they are likely to fight it the usual way) – giving the President at least some leeway in spending.
4. Closing Guantanamo Bay might actually be possible this year. On this issue, Mr. Obama is the president who cried wolf: During his 2008 election campaign, he pledged to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison within a year. That promise was dropped, and Guantanamo's history of detention without trial, mistreatment of prisoners and hunger strikes continued for another half-decade.
On Tuesday night, he once again promised to close the prison. There was good reason to doubt his word, given his past record. But an analysis of the remaining prisoners published by the BBC Tuesday suggests that there may be more hope. The number of detainees has dropped from 750 in 2002 to 155 now; 77 of them have been cleared for transfer, 45 are "in limbo" but are ineligible to appear before the controversial military-hearing board, and "about 31 detainees" are slated for prosecution. While that leaves a number of men whom the United States seems determined to hold indefinitely without prosecution, the numbers are now small enough that it might be possible for Mr. Obama finally to keep his oft-broken promise.