Obama, Wolf speeches: Similar themes, different tones
President Obama did not sound as if he expected the Republicans who control Congress to actually do anything with the economic policies he proposed Tuesday night in his sixth State of the Union speech.
President Obama did not sound as if he expected the Republicans who control Congress to actually do anything with the economic policies he proposed Tuesday night in his sixth State of the Union speech.
Instead, Obama seemed determined to influence the debate over income inequality and the diminishing fortunes of the middle class at the center of the developing 2016 campaign to choose his successor.
"Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well? Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?" Obama asked.
Among other things, Obama proposed free community college tuition and expanded tax credits for the middle class, paid for with tax increases on the wealthy.
In doing so, he sought to tap the vein of populism and attempted to move beyond the politics of austerity that have dominated during the slow climb back from recession. Republicans had already called the proposals dead on arrival.
"He's going into this with no fear, absolutely nothing to lose," said Democratic strategist Daniel F. McElhatton, of Philadelphia. "He's putting the GOP in a box."
Another Democratic chief executive with a belief in the power of government to improve lives and who is facing a more conservative legislature - Pennsylvania Gov. Wolf - struck a more conciliatory tone earlier Tuesday in his inaugural address in Harrisburg.
Wolf, a York businessman who won the state's top office in his first campaign, spoke of "stagnant wages and a shrinking middle class" and the need to "put the interests of our hardworking families ahead of the special interests."
But he pointedly praised conservative House Speaker Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny), mentioned his respect for free enterprise, and stressed throughout his speech a come-let-us-reason-together approach.
"We need leaders today who are willing to listen to each other, and learn from each other, and work together," Wolf said at one point.
"We have to respect each other's ideas, we have to respect each other's values," he said. "We have to believe that none of us alone has all the answers - but that together, we can find an approach that works."
Wolf faces an estimated $2.3 billion deficit and will have to work with the largest GOP majorities in the state House and Senate since the 1950s, while closing the gap and pursuing his goal of increased state spending on education.
And with a constitutional requirement for a balanced budget, Wolf doesn't have the luxury of playing a positioning game.
"I think he understands the political reality he faces," said pollster G. Terry Madonna of Franklin and Marshall College. "His style is to build consensus, and he wants to move beyond the acrimony, bitterness, and frayed relationships between previous governors and the legislature."
The background to both Wolf's inaugural speech and Obama's address is increasing polarization in politics, and an anxiety among middle-class Americans despite improvements in the economy.
Nationally, unemployment has fallen to 5.6 percent, gasoline prices are down, stock markets are soaring, and the economy grew 5 percent in the third quarter of last year, its fastest pace in more than a decade.
But wages for workers are stagnant, and wealth has continued to flow to Americans in the top income strata. Democrats, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and some Republican presidential candidates are talking about the need to redress income inequality and crack down on Wall Street excess.
"If anything, the speech was ghostwritten by Elizabeth Warren," McElhatton said. "She's driving the narrative right now."
And the president's moves could influence the overwhelming favorite for the Democratic nomination, the centrist Hillary Rodham Clinton.
"Obama is certainly putting a stamp on what a Democrat should stand for in '16, and it's something the Republican candidates are going to have to deal with," McElhatton said.
To Republicans, Obama's slow rollout of his proposals prior to the speech and use of executive orders - on immigration, most recently - show that he didn't get the message the voters sent in crushing the Democrats in the midterms.
"More Washington tax hikes and spending is the same old top-down approach we've come to expect from President Obama that hasn't worked," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio).
But the White House signaled it wanted to fight that battle, which it won in 2012.
"I think we should have a debate in this country between middle-class economics and trickle-down economics," White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said Sunday on CBS's Face the Nation.
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