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“The State of the Union is Still Uncertain,” The Root, 27 January 2010.

Obama dogged Congress about deficits that threaten America’s livelihood–and the “deficit of trust” that threatens its democracy.

Capitol Hill is a wild, rowdy beast, and a president either rides it or gets bucked out of town. President Obama has learned that lesson the hard way over the past 12 months, and the question that loomed largest as he strode into Congress for his first State of the Union address was this: Can he regain control of the Beltway’s always fractious debate—or will the “ways of Washington” tear him down?

As has been the case at several high-stakes moments in his political career, Obama rose to the rhetorical task. He laid a heavy guilt trip on the beltway stalwarts who have “for years” stopped progressive change. “We face a deficit of trust—deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works,” he said. “To close that credibility gap, we must take action on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue … to give our people the government they deserve.”

Obama then ticked off a long list of ideas—from community college reform to new trade agreements overseas—designed to boost the competitiveness of the American economy, but also to win the approval of his audience of Republicans, Democrats and ordinary Americans. While some of these policies—such as the move to freeze non-military discretionary spending after 2011, or directly challenge the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on corporations and campaigns—are controversial, Obama understood that the State of the Union is the rare speech in which policy details matter far less than tone. Indeed, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi noted just after the address concluded: “Good policy is probably good politics, but the fact is that what’s important is what it means to the American people.”

So Obama wisely doled out a heap of feel-your-pain empathy, waved the American flag of resilience in the face of hard times, and bashed the banks regularly. He “set the record straight” on just who got the United States deep into debt, and also took responsibility for some of the confusion that has reined in the debate on health care. He also mixed in enough humor to afford himself an occasion to flash that million-dollar smile.

His performance, roundly praised by colleagues in the House and Senate, was critical in a moment in which progressives are disheartened by Obama’s dip in popularity and a crushing electoral defeat in Massachusetts. With November elections just around the corner, congressional Democrats are feeling hounded, and their leadership is openly divided. Republicans are emboldened by the success of their party-of-no strategy. And voters are in a throw-the-bums-out kind of mood—62 percent say the nation is headed in the wrong direction. In the House of Representatives, “We were frustrated and wondering,” says Keith Ellison, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus from Minnesota. “The circumstances that we’re in are difficult, and we were looking for him to shoot some light back into the moment. I think he did a good job of that.”

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“Obama’s Second Presser Keeps Progressive Pressure On,” The Root, 24 March 2009.

The President hits primetime to make the case for his 2010 budget.

Barack Obama’s second prime-time news conference as president, held in the East Room of the White House just six weeks after the first, did not provide new, meaty policy prescriptions or one-liners that make for good television. But it did further the sense that, in America, there is a man in charge, and he—to borrow from a zinger he let rip on one nagging CNN reporter—“knows what he’s talking about.”

Those who have questioned Obama’s “overexposure” should by now have realized that the president is in the business of leapfrogging inner-Beltway protocol and addressing the American people directly. This time around, the president even allowed follow-up questions from the press corps—another nod to transparency that provided for a bit more clash. On more than one occasion, Obama stood up for himself in the face of confrontational rebuttals and proved himself to be as thoughtful and expansive a thinker as we’ve come to expect—especially in the wake of the intellectually flat-footed President George W. Bush.

Reporters focused primarily on the state of the economy and the president’s budget, which faces a vote in Congress by month’s end. At the end of his remarks—trying to soothe both markets and worried families—he compared the United States, with its complex, often frustrating impediments to legislative action and political reform, to a lumbering ocean liner: “It’s not a speedboat,” he said. “It doesn’t just turn around right away.” (That much could also be said of the president’s sometimes lugubrious, repetitive speaking style.)

Still, Obama managed to squeeze in the list of his budgetary priorities (“expectations”) no less than six times: Health care reform, energy action, investments and reforms in education, and an attempt to crack down on long-term government expenditures anchored his directive to the Democratic-led Congress. The real question in weeks ahead is whether the vote on the budget will be framed as a part of the reconciliation process, which bypasses a potential filibuster, or standard procedure, which would require the same, stubborn 60 votes in the Senate. (Ezra Klein has a good rundown here.)

Congressional arcana aside, Obama’s calmly progressive agenda is practically a revolution given the American political climate in recent years: “At the end of the day, the best way to bring our deficit down is not with a budget that continues the very same policies that have led to a narrow prosperity and massive debt. It’s with a budget that leads to broad economic growth by moving from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest.”

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“Duty Calls,” The Root, 25 February 2009

President Obama talks with Congress, warning America that its “day of reckoning” is here.

It was a poor man’s State of the Union—but we’re all poor now! And, like a responsible parent, President Barack Obama wouldn’t let us forget it last night. Despite the sobering tumbles of financial markets and the steady uptick in job-loss numbers, the president asked the American people and their elected leaders in Congress to stay and fight. “What is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face, and take responsibility for our future once more,” he said. Echoing the words of a young girl from South Carolina who wrote to Congress asking for help with her crumbling school building, he said: “We are not quitters. We are not quitters.”

The speech, which was not an official State of the Union address, was previewed by advisers as “Reaganesque,” and it lived up to the hype. With Reagan’s sunny style, Obama delivered a hybrid speech, mixing the gloomy global prognosis of his inaugural address and the call to responsibility that rang through some of his most memorable moments as a candidate. The starkly progressive address was a firm, impassioned call to “claim opportunity from ordeal.”

That’s a fancy way of asking America to make lemonade from lemons—though Obama has proven himself a master at pricking the national conscience while still winning our admiration (as with the 67 separate ovations the Democratic Congress offered its new leader). In the first, most populist, third of his speech, the president went heavy on the admonitions. “If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that for too long, we have not always met these responsibilities—as a government or as a people.” He called out bankers in search of “quick profit at the expense of a healthy market” and CEOs who “use taxpayer money to pad their paychecks or buy fancy drapes or disappear on a private jet.” All this was in line with the tone struck at this week’s White House fiscal responsibility summit, held in advance of the unveiling of Obama’s first budget tomorrow.

This disciplinary section had two clear targets: sickly financial markets, as well as homeowners and working families teetering on the brink. Obama connected the dots between the series of confusing bailouts and stimulus packages and problems on the ground. He explained how the freeze in lending means businesses can’t make payroll, consumers can’t consume, and why government must step in. He touted a sweeping tax cut—coming to most Americans on April 1. And he promised big business that the Treasury would keep handing out cash—“probably more than we’ve already set aside” to keep the economy from collapsing. He announced a new lending fund to help small businesses, car buyers, and students attending college, and flagged his previously announced $75 billion housing plan to help families refinance their mortgages. And he pledged to help the American auto industry recover from it current woes: “I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.”

But he also warned of even leaner times ahead, insisting that “Democrats and Republicans will have to sacrifice some worthy priorities for which there are no dollars. And that includes me.”

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“No Backbone; No Bailout,” The Root, 30 September 2008.

John Boehner wept. Roy Blunt fiddled. Nancy Pelosi lamented.

And on a day when the stakes could not have been higher, or the situation graver, nothing worked in Washington.

On one of the most chaotic and stunning days on Capitol Hill in recent memory, the 110^th Congress rejected the $700 billion proposed bailout of troubled financial institutions stuck with a surplus of illiquid assets. Stern warnings had been pouring in from all sides for the past week. Prominent economists and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson cautioned that failure to act would lead to economic Armageddon. President Bush said of the economy, that without a deal, “this sucker could go down.” Democrats left the vote open for an additional half hour, hoping to persuade fence-sitting representatives to get behind the proposal. The bill failed in the House by 23 votes.

High expectations surrounding the bailout calmed the markets last Friday. But at around 2 pm. Monday, after the sale of Wachovia to Citigroup became final, and as the wheels began to fall off the rescue package, the Dow Jones Industrial Index began spiraling downward to its biggest single-day drop in history, closing down 777 points. The NASDAQ lost more than ten percent of its value. Homeowners, small businesses, and other credit seekers face an extraordinarily tough lending environment in the weeks and months ahead.

House Minority leader John Boehner actually began weeping on the House floor as he urged his colleagues to support the bill. The roll call was unusually political. Only 66 of 199 Republicans voted in favor of the bill, while 140 of 235 Democrats climbed aboard. It was a game of chicken to see who would provide less support for a bill that everyone thought had to pass.

A better, less political, measure of the proposal’s importance was provided by a particularly courageous faction in the House: those members not running for reelection. These 26 retiring lawmakers, of both parties, were heavily supportive—all but three decided to bite the bullet and authorize the massive drain on the Treasury.

As it shook out, Democrats put a respectable number of votes on the table—votes whipped on the assurance that they would have Republican cover on the rescue of a Bush administration albatross. “[House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi went in saying she’d deliver 150 votes, and she did deliver them,” says Robert Borosage, co-director of the progressive Campaign for America’s Future. “If you were just going to do it in Democratic votes, you’d do a very different bill.”

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