Szilárd VAJDA's blog

The state of the union address for 2014 just finished a few minutes ago. Quite intense one hour speech from President Obama in front of the Congress. A lot of supporters as well as republicans dressed up for one of the most important speeches of the year. 

I do not know how much this speech was practiced, but it was just perfect from many view points. Same with the speech writers. They just did great. Short sentences, the right body language, addressing the whole spectrum of the american nation and definitely a lot of promises. I was wondering why it was necessary to promise so many things in one night, and why all these so-called projects start exactly today? I had the impression nothing happened before and all wonders start over night.

It was funny to see how the supporters of the president stud up, clapped their hands and sat back again and repeated the manoeuvre each couple of seconds. I think it was quite of an exercise for many of the politicians and participants, alike.  We both know that words do not change things, but facts do. However, at speech level is was a great work, and I could just hope that every world leader  has these skills as President Obama. 

The speech writers managed to touch all the major sectors starting from education, research, jobs, healthcare trough single parents, women's rights, and definitely no discrimination based on age, gender and sexual orientation. Although it seems here in US everybody is equal it seems in practice there are a hell of a lot of issues which do not work as the law would dictate and the president exhorted everybody to fight against all these unlawful things. Good!

During the speech we had the chances "to meet" directly some jobless family, a worker from the pizza shop who got just lucky to get a salary raise, a student who miraculously become fluent in English and a soldier who was hit during a deployment in the Middle East and his success story of his recovery from a serious brain injury. They were well picked and organised guests, - thus pretty much artificial -, introduced by the president, but honestly for a European like me it was nothing but a cheesy cliche, and nothing which would improve the quality of the speech. I would have preferred to hear more verbs in past and not verbs in the future. However, even the First Lady was addressed in the speech and her contribution in health and education brought to daylight which probably was a good idea to share with the public. 

Of course security was treated in a special chapter, and I am certainly sure and I was reassured by the president that there will be no nuclear bomb produced by Iran in the next few years, and the support for Israel is always there, so hopefully we will live in a safer world for the next couple of years at least. And hopefully much care will be focused on environment, although I have not heard anything from the president about ratifying the Kyoto protocol. I was also happy to hear there will be more boots on US ground rather than on foreign soil, though I do not know what those soldiers will do once their are back on motherland. I was rather pleased to hear about closing Guantanamo, but I keep hearing this promise for quite a while and [unfortunately] still a promise it is. Of course solar (and renewable) energy could not be missed from such a speech and let's hope for the best, but I think it would be better to stop building high consumption cars first in US, and we already can do something before even starting collecting solar energy.

Altogether, the speech was simply just great, impeccable I would say! Definitely, the oratorial skills of the president Obama are at the highest standards possible. The message was right to the point, clear, addressing the whole nation, even me, a poor non-resident alien was poked with a promise regarding immigration reform, but I had the feeling it was just rather a show, an entertainment for the american public and much less an agenda what is to be followed.

P.S. Anyhow, I am just a European, familiar with other kind of talks, where the accent is focused more on things (facts hopefully) than some well orchestrated guests used as puppets to serve a certain purpose.