By Steven Cichon, 1L

Republicans everywhere breathed a sigh of relief when, for all intents and purposes, their primary concluded.  On April 10, 2012, Rick Santorum bowed to the inevitable and left the race, as Mitt Romney continued to build momentum to reach the delegate threshold needed to become the challenger to President Obama.

However, as often in the case in military history, one war beget another: the general election.  Last year I expressed optimism that the differences between the Republican nominee and President Obama would make for an important debate on the future direction of our country.

Unfortunately, as the last couple weeks in politics have been, shall we say, “less than stellar.”  The main chatter was about Democrat pundit Hillary Rosen said about Mitt Romney’s wife Ann: that she had never “worked” a day in her life and could not relate to other women.  As the son of a stay-at-home mom, I found it offensive, and I was puzzled as well at the lack of tolerance that some feminists seem to afford women who have made different choices than they have.  Nevertheless, even though Rosen is a frequent guest at the White House, it’s a waste of time to discuss her condescending opinion when one considers the shifting dangers in foreign policy, the painful economy, and the five trillion dollars that President Obama has added to the federal deficit.

Likewise, there has been a flap over, wait for it, dogs.  Yes, dogs!  The “issue” attracted some coverage when Democratic surrogates and bloggers resurrected a report from a Boston newspaper which stated that Mitt Romney restrained and put his dog on top of the automobile on a family vacation many years ago.  In retaliation, several conservatives pointed out that in one of Barack Obama’s autobiographies (by the age of fifty he has already written two of them) he mentioned that he had eaten dog meat while in Indonesia as a boy.

What Romney did was foolish, but it is not an election-issue for any but the most die-hard dog lovers (and most PETA members are probably Democrats), and what Barack Obama ate while in a country with a culture that is very different than our own, not to mention that he was a child, has no relevance for even the most die-hard dog lovers.

The stay-at-home mom diss and the doggy wars may make for some interesting stories for reporters and great fodder for Jon Stewart, but I believe that we are in the eye of the storm.  The Republicans have stopped spending millions of dollars tearing each other to pieces, and they and the Democrats, who have enjoyed watching Mitt Romney’s favorable ratings decline with none of their input, are about to embark on the general election fight.

The issue now is, what will the issues be?  Those are hard to predict.  The conventional wisdom a year before the 2008 election was that the Iraq war would dominate the debates, but instead the housing market bubble burst, and he economy became the number one issue.

But we can to think like the President, his challenger, and their advisers think.  The issues they want to hammer home are issues that they think will win them more voters, and will hence be in the news.

Romney will try to hit on issues where Obama is weakest: health care reform (whether you agree with it or not, it is unpopular with Republicans and independents), the deficit (Obama famously called President Bush’s four trillion dollar addition to the federal deficit “unpatriotic), and the economy (8.2% unemployment, 88 million able-bodied people not searching for work).  To portray himself as the man for the job, Romney will highlight his business background and better equipped to lead the government in response to the poor economy.

Obama, ironically, may hit Romney on some of the same issues.  The Affordable Care Act, where Obama spent most of his political capital, was largely based on the health care legislation that Mitt Romney signed at the state level in Massachusetts.  He will attack Romney for being out-of-touch due to his wealth, and point out that much of Romney’s business background was in private equity, groups who, in making current companies more competitive and profitable, often cut employees.  Obama will say that he needs four more years in order to complete his vision of “fundamentally transforming” America.

The campaigns will focus on two things: turning out their own base and winning over the people who truly are “swing voters” (I’m not talking about the people you know who say they are independent then vote for every Republican or Democrat on the ballot).  In 2008, the Democrats had a great turnout, and in 2010 the Republicans returned the favor, so both sides will be looking to repeat their recent successes.

To turn out the base the Republicans and Democrats will feed their party members “red meat,” which are the sort of issues that win a lot of applause at the respective conventions.  Think of the Republican support of increasing domestic oil drilling (even though it will likely have no effect on current gas prices), or the Democratic line on getting wealthy people to “pay their fair share” (even though the Buffet Rule will do next-do-nothing in getting the deficit down).  All the while the parties will try not to offend independent voters who are open to pulling the lever for either side.

While Democrats and Rick Santorum supporters had hoped that the primary would go to a deadlocked convention, it was not to be.  The polls have Obama and Romney in a dead heat.  Whether or not that changes, it is anyone’s guess.

As King Theoden said before the titanic battle at Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers: “so it begins.”

By Steven Cichon, 1L

The unemployment rate of the United States continues to drop, currently at 8.2% for March according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, but a large part of that is the record-high amount of people not in the labor force: over 88 million.  Clearly the economy is not in rebound for all, and expect statistics related to these participation rates to be key in the upcoming Presidential election as the candidates try to spin the economic situation in their favor.

But what does it all mean to the upcoming Valparaiso law graduates?  With an average debt load from law school, not counting other loans, at about $118,000 with a 6.8% interest rate (for federal loans), they are ready to start working, as on average they will owe $8,000 a year in interest before even denting their principle.

Unfortunately, there is much truth in the conventional wisdom that America has too many lawyers.  As an online article from the New York Times reported in June of 2011, the consulting firm EMSI (Economic Modeling Specialists, Inc.) measured how many people passed the bar or graduated law school compared to the estimates of annual legal job openings.  The results were bleak.  From 2010-15, there are about 26,000 legal openings per year estimated across the nation.  However, there were 53,500 people who passed the bar across the United States in 2009, and about 44,000 new law graduates.  If you consider the unemployed attorneys with experience who will be competing with the new graduates for legal jobs, the job market begins to look very, very bad.

Dean Conison, however, predicts that the market will recover with time, and that it will be different than it was before, where most lawyers worked in small and medium-sized firms.  He explained that the skills and knowledge that students pick up while in law school are valuable in employment settings outside the legal field, where a JD may not be required but would be recommended.  “A law degree will be more broadly valued,” he said, and added that law school provides a versatile and flexible career path, noting that there are many people with legal training who work in the financial sector, as an example.

But what about people who want to work in the legal field?  As the economy improves, there will be more need for traditional lawyers, Dean Conison said.  He said that there are three main things students can do to prepare themselves for the legal job search:

First, students need to build a portfolio.  Students need to get hands on experience, do well on the academic front, and volunteer.  Second, students have to learn how to market themselves.  He noted that the law school provides workshops, counseling, and mentoring in order to help students.  Finally, students need to get to know people and build relationships.

Lisa Cannon, who works in the Career Planning Center and is Director of Experiential Education, agreed with Dean Conison on how important networking is.  She said that most jobs will be gotten through referrals and contacts, not the traditional job postings.  She sees the CPC’s role as “setting up a toolbox for a career path.”  Because long-term employment with one employer is no longer the norm, their goal is to teach students how to conduct a job search which never will quite end.  Ms. Cannon expressed disappointment in the drop in attendance at the events that the CPC puts on, such as luncheons with alumni or employers or the Externship Expo, and stated they are trying to find out why and how they can change that.

What will students do when they encounter difficulty finding employment that can pay the amount due on their loans and living expenses?

Ann Weitgenant, the Associate Director of Student Financial Planning, who provided the debt numbers of the Valparaiso law graduates, said that there are several approaches students can take.  For instance, they could ask for an economic hardship deferment, or forbearance, on their loans.  Another option is the Income Based Repayment Plan.  It assesses a student’s marital status, loan amount, and income, and determines an amount that it believes a student can afford per month at that income.  If the loan isn’t paid off in twenty-five years, the student’s loan could be discharged.  Finally, there is a loan forgiveness program for people working in public service which can discharge the rest of a student’s loans after ten years of work.  She recommends that students conduct research about their financial situation as early as possible, and noted that every student who graduates gets counseling on their financial situation before graduating.

There is no denying that the economy is struggling to recover, especially the legal field, and the new order will be very different than what has existed in the past.  To be successful, students are going to need to take advantage of every opportunity available, and truth be told, many Valparaiso law graduates will have to look outside the legal field in order to find employment.  Dean Conison believes that if students get started with an opportunity, and continue to build upon it, they will be able to continually leverage their employment opportunities higher and higher.

To the 2012 Valparaiso law graduates, good luck!

By Steven Cichon, 1L

The Republican primary, which will determine who will go toe-to-toe with President Obama in November, is one of the most volatile in at least eighty years. An article in the National Journal stated that “polling data supplied by Gallup dating back to 1930 shows that no other race since that time has even come close to the same level of volatility.” A majority of candidates that signed up have had a lead in the polls at least once nationally, and the polling swings in states is even more extreme.

The Republican primary has Republicans worried and Democrats excited. Republicans are worrying that the primary will last too long, too much money will be spent on it, and that the eventual nominee could be weak and damaged. Democrats are excited for exactly those same reasons.

Looking at important factors only, it would seem that the Republicans would have a very strong position against Barack Obama. Unemployment levels are still high. Gas prices are rising as a conflict with Iran seems more and more likely. The national debt is over fifteen trillion dollars. And Obama’s signature domestic achievement, the Affordable Care Act, is still opposed by a majority of Americans (Quinnipiac has 52-39% of Americans favoring a repeal). In that same poll, Quinnipiac found that more Americans are optimistic about the economy, but a majority believe that Obama should not be re-elected (50-45%).

The poor news and polls for Obama, however, don’t stop him from leading the remaining four Republican candidates in head-to-head polls, with leads ranging from six to over ten percent.

Which brings us back to the primary. The mudslinging that the different candidates have been throwing have had a hand in lowering their favorable ratings, and the result has been a net benefit for President Obama. The candidates are raising and spending millions of dollars in the different states not arguing why they will be the best candidate to face Obama in November, but to paint the other candidates in as negative as a light as possible.

Democrats are hoping that the primary could yield three results: a Gingrich candidacy, a Santorum candidacy, or a brokered convention, and Republican primary voters have not caught on yet, or don’t want to catch on.

If Gingrich were to be the nominee, the election would be exciting, there is no doubt about that. A Gingrich-Obama debate would be great to watch, and the two competing grand visions that the candidates would offer would be compelling. However, Gingrich is very undisciplined: you never know what he is going to say next. For instance, he told the National Review that in order to understand Barack Obama you have to understand the “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview. It is disturbingly similar to the “birther” backlash that Obama suffered; paranoid far-right conservatives who believed that Obama was not an American citizen. Don’t even get me started on his idea of a lunar base.

As bad as a Gingrich candidacy would be (or good, if you prefer the Obama administration), I think a Santorum candidacy would be worse. This is because I believe that in order for the Republicans to win in November, they have to, more than anything else, hit Obama hard on the economy, the debt, and the Affordable Care Act. With Santorum in the running, I could see a scenario where Obama gets a pass on those three issues, and instead the national debate could be about contraception in private insurance companies and whether or not Obama was infringing on religious freedom. That would be a losing platform, as well as Santorum constantly wearing his religion on his sleeve. And I say this as a churchgoing, conservative, pro-life Catholic (all of which Santorum is, except his fiscal conservatism is more akin to George W. Bush’s big government conservatism).  No, the national debate must not be about social issues Mr. Santorum, and his hardline stance on issues like gay marriage is pushing away younger voters who could support the GOP ticket otherwise.

Which brings me to the third possibility: none of the Republican candidates gain a winning majority of delegates, and the Republicans head to Tampa Bay, Florida, with no candidate chosen. The uncertainty level is high: it could be an absolute disaster to a grand slam. On one end, the convention could produce a Presidential candidate who the GOP voters detest, which would depress GOP turnout in the general election, which would assure an Obama victory. On the other end, the convention could produce a great candidate who could excite the Republicans and have an edge with independents. The resulting media circus could help or hurt, depending on what goes on.

As someone who is not a fan of Obama, it pains me to see the Republican party on the edge of repeating some of the mistakes that they did in 2010: putting forth extremely problematic candidates in key swing states. If the Republicans had nominated the “more electable” candidates in three key Senate races (Colorado, Delaware, and Nevada), the Republicans would most likely be in charge of the Senate.

This election is no different. They’re not choosing someone to be the governor of a red state like Texas, they are choosing someone to run against Barack Obama across each state, whether red, blue, or purple.

Mitt Romney is not the best candidate the Republicans have. He has difficulty explaining some of his changing positions, and comes across as insincere. He cannot relate to people on a personal level when it comes to the economic difficulty due to his wealth. I don’t begrudge someone who is rich, good for them, but I couldn’t help but wince at Romney’s ten-thousand dollar bet with Rick Perry, or his clumsy explanation of how he plans to focus on the middle class: because he “doesn’t worry” about the rich or poor. Still, I think he is much better than Gingrich and Santorum; his moderate record in Massachusetts will help him with the crucial independents, and I think his experience in private equity is uniquely applicable in a time when the debt is so high and government so inefficient and mistrusted. Faced with the possibility of a brokered convention, I still prefer Romney to the uncertainty that would surely result otherwise.

All the hand-wringing on the Republican side and the gloating on the Democrat side could very well be premature. If gas prices are high in November, the Republicans could gain major traction on Obama’s catering to the anti-oil environmentalists in his party. On the other hand, the economy could start adding a million jobs next month, which would all-but-guarantee his re-election.

But for the time being we have nothing else to go on but the here-and-now. The odds of the Republicans retaking the White House are lower than they should be, and the messy primary is the main reason. And that’s a fact.

By Steven Cichon

First-year law student

(This is a work of parody, satire, and a dash of exaggeration).

Hello,  I want to thank you all for taking time out of your busy schedules for tuning in.  I have no doubt that by this time next year I will be standing here, before you again, and I will be outlining then what I was not able to do because of the Republicans.

Let me be clear, I am not a big fan of the terms “Red States” and “Blue States.”  If you remember, I spoke at the 2004 Democratic Convention, saying these very things.  In one of my autobiographies, I wrote about the same things.

But one thing I have learned since becoming President is that even though the Democrats and I are done with the Red State/Blue State dichotomy, the Republicans are not.  In 2008 I had a Democratic supermajority in Congress and I was more than happy to drop in from time to time to get the Republicans’ thoughts on what would become the very popular and successful stimulus and health care reform.

Unfortunately, the Republicans did not want to work with me, and because they do not like my great ideas and stood up for their beliefs, we have an unacceptably high unemployment rate.  The stimulus program that they opposed worked beautifully, and would have created twenty million green jobs if we would have been able to spend more money.

And that brings me to my biggest point of tonight.  There are some who say that we have too much debt.  That $15 trillion in federal debt is too much, and that we need to work on balancing the budget.  They forget that I had a plan that would have eliminated the debt.  Earlier I argued against the tax break given to corporate jets.  We could have raised trillions in revenue by eliminated that tax break.  Raising the taxes on the top 1 percent was another solution that would have raised trillions more.  Instead, they want to give more money to the rich by stealing from the poor.

I don’t want to dwell on that subject much longer, since I want to talk more about green jobs, but I found it ironic that they opposed my health care reform, which would have saved trillions of dollars.  They opposed it because they didn’t want uninsured people to get health insurance, even when it could have saved so much money.

The Republicans are much more interested in helping the Big Oil companies.  The most recent example of this was their insistence in fast-tracking the Keystone pipeline, which would start in Canada and end in Texas.  It would have given Big Oil hundreds of billions of dollars and only created a couple hundred jobs at most.  On top of that, it would have doubled our carbon emissions and certainly increase the Earth’s temperature and resume the rise of the oceans, which stopped rising after my inauguration speech when I was elected in 2008.

Let me be clear, right now, we need to focus on green energy.  There are those who say that we should ignore green energy and give more trillions of dollars to the oil industry.  That is a recipe for disaster.  We can kill two birds with one stone by creating ten million green jobs, which would reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and end global warming.

As you can see, my ideas are the best for moving America forward.  Yes, two years ago the Republicans did okay in the midterm elections, but that was because of the Koch Brothers and Fox News spreading misinformation.  By the way, my new plan for education would bring hundreds of New York Times editorials to the classrooms across America.  Unless someone is against students reading more, I can’t imagine why anyone would oppose that measure.  It would also create about five hundred newspaper jobs.  I’m just saying..

So, in conclusion, as President, I have helped move America forward.  Let me be clear.  The next election is the most important election we have had yet.  I have just gotten started implementing my great ideas to fundamentally transform America.  It would be a shame for that to be put in jeopardy.  Just let me be clear, America can’t afford that.  Republicans would say we can’t afford anything when we are $15 trillion in debt, that we should not support science, education, health care, green energy, and apple pie.  I will not accept that.

So in November, make sure you get out and vote.  If you do, I make the following promises: close Guantanamo Bay, create ten million green jobs, reduce unemployment to zero percent, end global warming, and everyone who votes a straight Democratic ticket in November will get a slice of my next stimulus bill.

Thank you, and good night.

By Steven Cichon

1st year law student

As 2011 wraps to a close the stage is set for the Republican primary battle, which takes place in less than a month, and the general election, which will really gear up after the primary is complete.  Most people haven’t even started paying too much attention yet, as they have more pressing things on their mind than an election that is still a long ways off.

The Republican primary has had the amount of drama as a good episode of Jersey Shore.  We’ve had several different “flavor of the month” politicians who have had a brief groundswell of support only to rapidly decline, such as Rick Perry and Hermain Cain.  Cain, by the way, just had another woman come forward saying that she has had an affair with him for many years.  I try to give people accused of unsavory activities the benefit of the doubt until they have been proven guilty, but Cain said that he has helped her out financially for many years without his wife’s knowledge.  Coincidentally, Cain is making an important campaign announcement on Saturday, December 3rd, so by the time you read this article he may already be out of the race.

The latest Republican candidate to experience a wave of support is Newt Gringrich.  I don’t know whether he is going to flame out like Perry or Cain, but I hope he does.  As liberal and conservative pundits have written, “his baggage has baggage.”  Whatever the result is, it will be interesting.

There have been a few important developments that affect the President’s re-election.  One is the decline in unemployment from 9.0% to 8.6%.  Most people may see the changed number in a headline or as a brief story on the news, and will assume that it is good, so there is going to be some positive perception of the President.

However, if you dig deeper into the number, you will find what caused the drop.  Roughly 120,000 people were added to payrolls, which is great.  But about 315,000 people gave up looking for work.  That second number also lowers unemployment, with the caveat that if those people re-enter the job market and can’t find a job the unemployment rate will rise again.  It’s also important to remember that people who find part-time work are considered employed in the regular employment figure, even though they want to work more.

Another issue that may have gone under your radar was the President punting on the Keystone Pipeline until 2013, amid opposition from environmental groups and support from business groups.  The gist of the project is that the Canadians have discovered that they have a vast oil reserve in their “tar sands” in Alberta, and unlike the Obama administration, the Canadian government is giving the go-ahead to developing oil reserves.  The proposed pipeline would take the oil from Alberta to Texas oil refineries.

This, of course, angered Obama’s environmentalist supporters.  So Obama’s decision tames that section of his constituency, at least until after the 2012 election.  However, there is no denying that the move is preventing jobs from being created.  The pipeline would be 1600 miles long, which would be a large undertaking.  I don’t put too much weight on people estimating how many jobs would be created through the pipeline, but there would be thousands of people employed and the United States would have a close source of oil that doesn’t come from third-world despots.  To be fair to the environmentalists, recovering the oil from Alberta’s tar sands is a dirtier process than normal oil extraction, but since the oil is going to be used eventually I think we should try to get a piece of the pie.

The final issue for the President that I want to hit on is the failure of the touted “Supercommittee.”  According to CNN.com, the bipartisan group of 12 Republicans and Democrats failed to agree on $1.2 trillion worth of savings over a ten-year period.  Typically, the Republicans blamed the Democrats and vice versa.  Democrats wanted to increase tax rates on the wealthy and limit the amount of reductions to entitlements, and Republicans were opposed to most tax increases and wanted to make more spending cuts.  U.S. debt recently surpassed 15 trillion dollars.  It is amazing to me that as our debt continues to skyrocket our representatives can’t even find ways to save $120 billion a year.

The failure cements the view of Washington D.C. as a dysfunctional and ineffective place, but even as the President tried to remain out of the battle by delegating the negotiations to Congress, it still reflects badly on him.  The President is still the figurehead of the United States government, no matter who controls Congress.

Looking ahead to 2012, President Obama faces significant headwinds to re-election.  Unemployment is high.  His signature domestic achievement, health care reform, still has more opposition than support.  Budding missteps such as Solyndra and Operation Fast and Furious could erupt into bigger scandals.  Finally, he has racked up a record-setting amount of debt in the past three years, despite calling George W. Bush “unpatriotic” for setting the previous record, which occurred over eight years.

Other than Pitbull’s great single “Give me everything” and season four of Jersey Shore, most developments in the country this year seem to be negative or neutral.  Here’s to hoping that 2012 is much better!

Steven Cichon

1L

Following the Republican Presidential nomination battle can be tiring.  There are debates after debates after debates, each with the hope by the sponsors that some “game-changing” event is going to take place which puts the race into an exciting new direction and net them a lot of publicity.

The 2008 nomination battles were much more interesting because for the first time in a very long time the candidates for President were not an incumbent President or Vice President.  We saw Barack Obama prevail over Hillary Clinton in a long, epic brawl, and we saw John McCain, his campaign once left for dead, claw back up to become the GOP Presidential nominee.

To be sure, the debates have shaken up the Republican field.  I think part of the reason that Rick Perry has faded in the polls is that his poor debate performances have given voters the impression that he is not ready for prime time.  Herman Cain has vaulted up to second place in most polls behind Mitt Romney, and I think it has to do with his likeable personality and his ability to communicate and connect with voters.  He has since hit a rough spot since the other candidates have piled on in opposition to his “9-9-9″ flat tax plan, so only time will tell if he is a flavor of the month or a serious contender.  And through it all, Mitt Romney has seemed almost unflappable, projecting a Presidential image on the stage, and seems to do well deflecting constant attacks on his health care reform that he enacted in Massachusetts while he was governor there as well as his wishy-washiness on other issues.

But there are so. many. debates.  It is almost with relief that the Iowa caucuses are taking place at a very early January 3, 2012.  At least we will not have to watch any more debates.  But that presents another problem.  In 2008 Democrats in Michigan and Florida moved up their states’ primaries and were sanctioned by the DNC by not fully seating their delegates.   Florida has done the same thing for this year’s Republican primary, prompting states that traditionally have earlier primaries, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina, to retaliate by moving their primaries up even further.

The constant barrage of ads, debates, news of primaries, scandals, and stories of the different candidates certainly get tiresome.  At least, if you devour politics like me.  However, that isn’t to say that there is no benefit.  By exposing candidates’ strengths and weaknesses early on, the Republican candidate who emerges the victor from the primary will be be stronger and seriously vetted, ready to take President Obama on.  All the candidates have issues that will present juicy negative news stories and fodder for ads by their opponent, but the earlier they have to start dealing with those issues, the better they will be prepared to deflect attacks.

Every election has people claiming that the election will be very decisive and seriously affect the future of the United States.  In 2012, I believe this claim is more true than most.  2008 was a default win for Barack Obama; he came to the stage at the time of a perfect storm which would have obliterated any Republican candidate, and enjoyed a Congress dominated by Democrats for the first two years of his term.  However, the 2010 midterms went decisively against him, giving the Republicans a huge win in the House of Representatives and cutting down on the Democrats’ majority in Senate.

2012 should settle, at least for the next four years, whether the directions that America want to take were entered into the GPS in 2008 or 2010.  2012 will be Obama’s first truly difficult general election.

We can disagree whether the Republicans or the Democrats have the better policy answers for the upcoming years.  We have serious debt problems that were aggravated by George W. Bush’s 8 years and exacerbated even more by Obama’s last 3 years.  The economy is not recovering the way it should.  Unemployment is high.  People are not positive for the future.  And to top it off, we have a huge wave of retiring baby boomers who are going to strain the entitlement programs even further (but maybe some of them are going to be retiring from the legal field).

Due to the problems I just mentioned, I hope you can agree with me that America deserves to have strong candidates to choose from in 2012.  The overabundance of Republican primary debates and earlier primaries will see to it that the Republican candidate will be well-positioned to take on President Obama.  What remains to be seen is what Obama will do to become a stronger candidate.

As Professor Dooley is fond of saying, what is the takeaway for this?  We will have a great Presidential election, featuring strong candidates, with serious issues to solve.  That can only be a good thing for the country.

By: Steven Cichon, 1L

A few weeks ago President Obama delivered a much-anticipated address to a joint session of Congress.  It’s purpose was to acquaint Americans with Obama’s latest plan to turn the economy around.  CBS News described the plan as a “spending and tax cut initiative expected to cost $447 billion.”

Plenty of people in Congress are skeptical, and they’re not just Republicans. TheHill.com reported that Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois said at the moment he does not have enough votes to pass the plan in the Senate.  The Senate is controlled by the Democrats.

When I listened to Obama’s speech, I was left with a feeling that “it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.”  But upon reflection it is much worse.  Obama had to have known ahead of time that the Democrat-controlled Senate would struggle getting 51 votes to pass it, after all he is the leader of the Democratic party, and if the Democrats are going to have problems voting for it, he knows that the Republicans definitely won’t.  The best he can hope for as far as the American Jobs Act getting passed is having Congressional leaders pick out specific portions of it to vote on and pass those.

Instead, I think President Obama is going to use the American Jobs Bill to try to shift blame of the poor economy onto the Republicans, and adopt President Truman’s strategy of running against a “do-nothing Congress.”  The question is, will the public buy it?

Does anyone really think that the economy is going to be saved if President Obama signs in a $447 billion “spending and tax cut initiative?”  Especially after the spectacular failure of the first Stimulus bill, which was supposed to create five million green jobs and keep the unemployment level under eight percent.

It’s sad that the President has cheapened the value of a joint session at Congress.  But tactically, he really has no choice.  Running for the Presidency in 2008, Obama didn’t have a record to run on, and instead ran against Bush’s record.  Now Obama will have a bad economy dragging him down, and his signature domestic achievement, the health care reform, is still unpopular.

Thus the hope and change turns into negative attacks on the opposition.  The plea for civility turns into “let’s take these sons of  (expletive) out,” from union boss Jimmy Hoffa.  And the call for a “post-racial” nation?  Don’t even get me started.

The American Jobs Act is the beginning of the 2012 election.  We are more than a year out.

It’s going to be a long twelve months.