Even though the spin masters tried to incorporate positive themes into the speeches,with the Democratic use of the word CAN and the Republican use of the word DREAM, the speeches indicated a belligerent adherence to what we already know about these parties indicating that there have been few lessons learned by either side over the past year.
Yesterday I provided my own predictions about how the State of the Union and the Republican Response would proceed in two posts, one concerning subject matter, “State of the Union 2014: What They Won’t Say,” http://conoutofconsumer.blogspot.com/2014/01/state-of-union-2014-republicans.html and words and phrases that I thought they SHOULD avoid, http://conoutofconsumer.blogspot.com/p/2014-state-of-union-words-to-avoid.html, “2014, State of the Union: Words to Avoid.” There were no big surprises, and I found both speeches depressingly predictable and a waste of time regarding my concerns as a consumer with my own American experience. The purpose of this post is a post-mortem of those speeches.
The disappointment started early with the President reciting the same old tired plugging of Obamacare, pulling out a real-live living example of how Obamacare is working, and ended with the Republicans parading out a Congress person, a Mom, a mom with a Down’s syndrome child, and the child of impliedly working-class Americans who touted her own experience working in McDonald’s to boot. In other words, the same old garbage from both sides.
The motivational words chosen by each side? The President’s word of the night was CAN, used no fewer than 12 times, as he paraded out his plans of what could be on a variety of issues, how, “We CAN DO IT.” The Republican word of the night was “DREAM,” mentioned no less than five times as reference was made to unspecified plans Republicans had for making dreams come true.
Mostly, the speeches were a depressing indicator that nothing has or is likely to improve in the country over the next year. Disappointing, but certainly not unpredicted. When push comes to shove, even with the efforts to use words like, "Working together," politicians exhibited our State of Divide, Not our State of the Union.
