Stakes high for Biden in State of the Union address -- Feb. 24, 2022 column

By MARSHA MERCER

When President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address Tuesday night, he’ll almost certainly start a sentence with: “The state of the union is . . .”

But how will he end it?

Presidents long have struggled to find the right word. In 1949, Harry Truman said the state of the union was “good,” which sounds like a gentleman’s C.

“Not good” Gerald Ford said in 1975, a few months after Nixon resigned. A year later, Ford said it was “better . . . but still not good enough.”

And a few months after that, voters sent Ford packing, in favor of a peanut farmer from Georgia who later described the state of the union as “sound.”

In 1983, Ronald Reagan – or a clever speechwriter -- found a model way to end to the sentence. “The state of our union is strong, but our economy is troubled,” he declared.

Ah, positivity and empathy. Good balance. Almost all presidents in the decades since have echoed Reagan that the state of the nation is strong and putting their spin on how to make it a “more perfect union.”

Biden’s address, delayed by COVID-19 protocols, comes at a perilous time.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reckless invasion of Ukraine this week threw the world into chaos. But even before the invasion, Americans were in a sour mood. Inflation, soaring gas prices, supply chain disruptions, the lingering pandemic, the fall of Afghanistan and other woes have dampened, if not extinguished, the hopeful flame that accompanied Biden’s inauguration last year.

Almost two-thirds (64%) of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, according to the Real Clear Politics average of polls Jan. 14 to Feb. 22.

Biden’s job approval rating is in the low 40s, and Congress’s is worse. Only 21% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing.

Gallup’s Mood of the Nation Survey last month found deep dissatisfaction with democracy itself. Only 30% of those surveyed said they were somewhat or very satisfied with our system of government and how it works.

No one wants to hear the president say the state of the union is grim and distressing. This is one of those times when such candor is not reassuring. We don’t need to be reminded about what we know all too well.

This State of the Union address is Biden’s opportunity to showcase his perspective and long experience -- in the Senate, as former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, as vice president – on the world stage. He needs to use the bully pulpit calmly.

The White House still believes it has done a poor job of accentuating the positive accomplishments of the last year. So Biden is likely to tout more than 6 million jobs created, the drop in the unemployment rate from 6.2% to 3.9% and plunging unemployment rolls – from more than 18 million to 2 million.

He also is likely to praise his new Supreme Court nominee, which he has said he will name by the end of February. Biden has more class than to turn the announcement into a reality TV moment in which the cameras pan to the winner. Please.

As the midterm elections loom, some will urge Biden to do what many of his predecessors have done: appease various constituencies with a laundry list of legislative items that have little chance of seeing the light of day.

If Biden resists that temptation and says something like the union is “strong, but . . . ,” and focuses on his priorities, he could strike a tone that is at once optimistic and realistic. Times being what they are, some Republicans will guffaw no matter what he says.

The world’s precarious situation may draw more viewers to Biden’s speech than in less stressful times. They want to hear the president address the international crisis and the economy with a thoughtful, steady voice.

He needs to explain why what happens in Ukraine is important to the United States, his sanctions and why they will succeed. On the economy, he needs to explain how his strategy will address the sectors that have not yet recovered.

This is a high stakes moment for the president and the state of the union.

© 2022 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved. 

Toxic politics, inflation batter Washington -- Nov. 11, 2021 column

By MARSHA MERCER

That was quick. Republican euphoria over Virginia’s election results and what they may portend for 2022 began to evaporate in less than a week.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu dashed the hopes of fellow Republicans Tuesday by saying he would not run for the Senate. Instead, he will seek a fourth two-year term as governor, which he is expected to win handily.

“My responsibility is not to the gridlock and politics of Washington. It’s to the citizens of New Hampshire. And I’d rather push myself 120 miles an hour delivering wins for New Hampshire than to slow down and end up on Capitol Hill debating partisan politics without results,” Sununu told reporters.

Republicans had counted on Sununu to run against incumbent Sen. Maggie Hassan, one of the weakest Senate Democrats seeking re-election in the midterm elections. Former Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire has also indicated she won’t run, leaving the New Hampshire GOP with lower tier candidates, so far.

Every Senate seat is crucial as both parties seek to break the 50-50 tie in their direction. Vice President Kamala Harris casts tie-breaking votes. Sununu’s decision was a blow to Republicans, who were blindsided by the announcement. Party leaders found out the same way everyone else did – on the news.

You can’t blame Sununu for saying, thanks but no thanks, even if he did it artlessly. Politics in Washington could hardly be nastier. Republican House members who vote “wrong” in the eyes of extremists – that is, in a bipartisan manner – now endure death threats.

One wonders why anyone who wants to be constructive – rather than a demagogue -- would take on the capital’s toxic atmosphere, although we must be thankful for those who do.

At the same time, Democrats are still smarting from the Virginia election debacle -- and they can’t catch a break. They want to celebrate the roughly $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill the House passed Nov. 5 and President Joe Biden is scheduled to sign Monday.

But Biden saw his victory lap derailed Wednesday by scary inflation numbers. The Consumer Price Index rose 6.2% last month from a year ago and is at its highest level in more than three decades.

Taming inflation is now a top priority for the White House, though there’s little a president can really do. Gerald Ford’s Whip Inflation Now button and Jimmy Carter’s cardigan sweater led to their one-term presidencies.

“Everything from a gallon of gas to a loaf of bread costs more, and it’s worrisome even though wages are going up,” Biden said Wednesday in Baltimore. “We still face challenges, and we have to tackle them.”

The spike in inflation threatens his $1.85 trillion social safety net and climate change reconciliation bill in the Senate, where Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and others worry it will feed inflationary pressures. White House and independent economists dispute that assessment.

“By all accounts, the threat posed by record inflation to the American people is not `transitory’ and is instead getting worse. From the grocery store to the gas pump, Americans know the inflation tax is real and DC can no longer ignore the economic pain Americans feel every day,” Manchin, of West Virginia, tweeted.

But Manchin, who holds a knife over Biden’s reconciliation package, has been all over Twitter touting the goodies the infrastructure bill will bring his state – “nearly $6 BILLION in infrastructure funding over the next decade.”

Note the time element: The money will come over 10 years. Democrats worry voters won’t see enough new jobs and economic growth by Election Day 2022.

Yet the bill was a bipartisan victory in a Congress where few occur. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was one of 19 Republicans who voted in favor in August. He recently called it a “godsend” for his home state of Kentucky.

Incredibly, House Republican leaders threaten to punish the 13 Republican members there who dared to vote for that same bill by stripping them of their committee assignments.

The threat prompted Biden to renew his call for more civility and cooperation in politics.

“I know I get in trouble when I talk about” bipartisanship, he said Tuesday. “As people say, why the devil would I like any Republicans? Well, it’s important. If we don’t generate consensus in America, we’re in trouble.”

©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Justice takes the long view -- April 24, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER

At a party, I ran into a friend who retired a few months ago after a stellar journalism career in Washington.   

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“I’m still trying to figure out how to be retired,” he said. “I start every morning going over what I don’t need to do that day.” No commute downtown…no speed-reading the newspaper…no worries that something is taking too long, he said.  

This prize-winning journalist looked sheepish, as if he’d been put out to pasture instead of liberated.

In America, you’re nobody unless you’re crazy busy. And that’s crazy wrong.

Learning to be retired shouldn’t mean learning to be obsolete. Consider the retirement of John Paul Stevens. You may have caught the former Supreme Court justice, who just turned 94, on the media interview circuit. He’s a soft-spoken gentleman who favors bow ties and civility in an age of the rant. His new book is “Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution.”

Nominated to the court by Republican President Gerald Ford in 1975, Stevens became one of the court’s most reliable liberals. He resigned four years ago after nearly 35 years on the bench and wrote a memoir.

After taking time to read newspapers and other publications and to reflect on the court’s rulings when he was in the minority, Stevens turned in his latest book to where he thinks the court has gone wrong. He makes the case for change through an almost impossible route, amending the Constitution.

His proposals on the death penalty, guns, campaign finance and gerrymandering are making waves. But Stevens concedes that none is likely to become part of the Constitution soon; eventually, maybe. Give him credit for taking the long view.

His book began to take shape after the shooting massacre of school children in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012, he told Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker.

“I read a newspaper story that said the federal database of criminal records might be incomplete because of a decision of the Supreme Court,” Stevens said. The court had ruled in 1997 that the federal government could not make states participate in background checks for gun sales.

“I thought if that decision might be responsible for a situation like the one in Newtown, they ought to change it. That got me to thinking that there had to be other rules that ought to be changed,” Stevens told Toobin.

Stevens proposes allowing Congress to force states to participate in background checks. He would limit the right to bear arms by adding five words to the Second Amendment: “when serving in the militia.”

The revised Second Amendment would read: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms when serving in the militia shall not be infringed.

“Emotional claims that the right to possess deadly weapons is so important that it is protected by the federal Constitution distort intelligent debate about the wisdom of particular aspects of proposed legislation designed to minimize the slaughter caused by the prevalence of guns in private hands,” Stevens writes.

Stevens still holds the admirable idea that the primary duty of someone in public office is “to make impartial decisions, not motivated by personal profit or personal gain or advantage” to his or her political party.

When he read a newspaper story about a Maryland redistricting plan in 2011 that benefited Democrats, he was incensed. In an interview on Scotusblog.com, Stevens called the redistricting plan “outrageously unconstitutional.”

He proposes to prohibit gerrymandering -- legislators drawing state and congressional districts with the goal of boosting the political strength of the party in power.

“It doesn’t take a genius,” Stevens told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, to see that the shapes of some congressional and state legislative districts are fishy.

Reading and reflecting require time. They’re the first things we throw overboard in our multi-tasking lives and the last we retrieve when daily pressures relent.

Working or retired, we all could benefit from thinking about the country we want. Whether you agree or disagree with Stevens, his ideas deserve the same serious thought he has given them and intelligent debate.  

© 2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Digital divide: Obama's tweet and Gerald Ford's watch -- July 7, 2011 column

By MARSHA MERCER

In December 1974, President Gerald R. Ford made news by becoming the first president to wear a digital wrist watch.

Writing about the digital watch, the great newspaper columnist Charles R. McDowell Jr. quoted a United Press International news story in its entirety:

“President Ford today wore a digital wrist watch. The watch, which shows the time in numerals, appeared on his left wrist when he chaired a meeting of his Domestic Council in the Cabinet Room. It was the first time they had seen the President wearing a watch without the big and little hands, some White House aides said.”

About this “strange little item,” McDowell wrote, “The significance of this story remains unclear to me after several readings and much deep thought. I suppose it should be taken at face value and with tolerance for the journalistic tradition that nothing is too trivial to report about the President of the United States.”

I was privileged later to work and be friends with Charley McDowell, who retired in 1998 and died last year. I came across the column in a booklet of some of his favorites. How I wish he were here for the news of Barack Obama’s big tweet.

President Obama made news Wednesday by becoming the first president to live tweet. Sitting on a tall stool in the East Room under the watchful gaze of the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington, Obama typed a question in 140 characters.

The Washington Post, New York Times and other organizations providing news and commentary on platforms not even dreamt of in 1974 covered the milestone. A picture on the front page of The Wall Street Journal showed Obama next to a screen grab of a tweet from House Speaker John Boehner.

I’m not saying the first presidential tweet or the first Twitter Town Hall from the White House is trivial, but both seem puny compared with Franklin D. Roosevelt's appearance on TV in 1939, Jimmy Carter's installation of the first computer in the West Wing in 1978, or even George H.W. Bush's first presidential email in 1992.

Obama is no stranger to technology. He’s the first president to use a BlackBerry and a frequent online guest.

In April, he did a Facebook Town Hall with Mark Zuckerberg. In January, he answered video questions submitted by YouTube users in a town hall-style event sponsored by Google. More than 40,000 video questions were submitted.

Last October, he took questions from young people via Twitter in a live town hall sponsored by MTV, BET and CMT. In 2009, he did an online town hall with questions from YouTube, Facebook and Twitter users.

For his first tweet, Obama typed, “In order to reduce the deficit, what costs would you cut and what investments would you keep – bo.”

Alas, the Twitter Town Hall went downhill from there. It proved that real-life town halls have a lot more going for them than the virtual variety. With a real-life town hall, there’s a chance, slim though it may be, for an unscripted moment between president and citizen.

In this case, Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and an amiable fellow, read the tweets to Obama. Dorsey made a point of saying that neither he nor Obama knew what the questions would be, as if that added drama. The questions – chosen by “curators” around the country – were safe and surprise-free.

The one near-surprise came when Dorsey said there was a question from “someone you may know.” Speaker Boehner’s tweet: “After embarking on a record spending binge that’s left us deeper in debt, where are the jobs?”

Obama patiently explained in his professorial style that Boehner is a Republican, so the question was “slightly skewed.”

If this was boring video, it was brilliant as a political organizing tool. The White House reported that by noon on the day of the event, more than 60,000 tweets had been sent to the hashtag #AskObama. Just think of all those fans, friends and followers.

In his Twitter debut, the president didn’t try to respond in 140-character tweets. He stuck to lengthy verbal responses. And so, another milestone awaits.

Obama still can become the first president to tweet a response. It’s no digital wrist watch. But if he does, you know it’ll make news.

© 2011 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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