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Investors.com
What
Obama really said in that
inaugural speech (And what he left out)
By Andrew Malcolm
1/22/13
Not
many inaugural addresses go
down in history books as memorable, especially second inaugural
addresses.
Lincoln aside.
With
few exceptions, inaugurals are
mere aspirational tone poems, providing a generally warm, good feeling
about
where the new or renewed leader wants to take the country although,
truth be
told, events usually begin reshaping those goals within days.
And
coming very soon after
Inauguration Day is the chief executive's annual State of the Union
address
when he details his laundry list of legislative goals to a joint
session of
Congress. For Obama, that comes on Feb. 12, three weeks from tonight.
Despite
the incumbent Democrat's
pride in his speech-making skills, Barack Hussein Obama's first
inaugural
speech was memorable in 2009 not for anything he said, but for the fact
that an
African American was saying it.
We
published a complete C-SPAN
video of those past remarks here. And this morning we have another
C-SPAN video
of Obama's 2013 remarks in full. Scroll down for that. And scroll down
for his
full 2013 speech transcript too.
Officials
estimated Obama's
inauguration crowd this time between 800,000 and a million, about half
the 2009
gathering. Much of the initial media coverage of Monday's 2,100-word
speech
focused on the downright liberal nature of the agenda Obama outlined,
although
he did not say the words "liberal" or its preferred codeword
"progressive."
It
is the beguiling style of
Obama's speechwriters to help their boss have it both ways in public
communications, whether it's about reducing the deficit or drilling for
oil.
He's 100% serious about cutting our historic debts, now larger than the
entire
economy itself. But we must also "invest," meaning "spend,"
on immense new infrastructure projects.
By
golly, we must achieve energy
independence and expand petroleum reserves. It's essential. But not at
the
expense of windmills or solar or algae.
Obama
will list a few soothing
platitudes that few would disagree with. A modern economy, he said
Monday,
requires highways and good schools. Free markets require some rules. A
great
nation cares for the vulnerable.
"We
have never relinquished
our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the
fiction that
all society’s ills can be cured through government alone," said the
president, who is trying to cure society's healthcare ills by
centralizing
control in the hands of unelected Washington bureaucrats.
Read
the rest of the article and view CSPAN
video at Investors.com
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