Beech Tree News Network

Last week, President Obama gave his eighth and final State of the Union Address. His remarks focused on four areas: providing economic opportunity, using technology to overcome challenges, ensuring our safety without policing the world, and making politics reflect what’s best in us. Advancement in these areas would improve our society.

The president’s address included the following statements (https://medium.com/@WhiteHouse/president-obama-s-2016-state-of-the-union...):
•    “All these trends have squeezed workers, even when they have jobs; even when the economy is growing. It’s made it harder for a hardworking family to pull itself out of poverty, harder for young people to start on their careers, and tougher for workers to retire when they want to.”
•    “That spirit of discovery is in our DNA. We’re Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers and George Washington Carver. We’re Grace Hopper and Katherine Johnson and Sally Ride. We’re every immigrant and entrepreneur from Boston to Austin to Silicon Valley racing to shape a better world.”
•    “Leadership means a wise application of military power, and rallying the world behind causes that are right. It means seeing our foreign assistance as part of our national security, not charity….The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith.”
•    “We have to end the practice of drawing our congressional districts so that politicians can pick their voters, and not the other way around. We have to reduce the influence of money in our politics, so that a handful of families and hidden interests can’t bankroll our elections….”

Eric Bradner, CNN, theorized that President Obama’s State of the Union speech would “…lay out a litany of Democratic pipe dreams that have little chance of becoming law. But his proposals are popular with voters and, if he's able to draw enough attention and his party picks up on them, could offer an early preview of 2016 election themes” (http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/18/politics/obamas-state-of-the-union-wades-i...). Maybe; but, based on what I’ve seen of political debates to date, plenty of topics are already on the debate table.

The State of the Union Address is governed by ceremony and tradition. It’s also an important political event. And, as President Obama said in concluding, “…God bless the United States of America” (https://medium.com/@WhiteHouse/president-obama-s-2016-state-of-the-union...).