2/8/2023

My Dear Friend & POTUS, JRB,

            Congratulations! Your SOTU was a success. You struck the “balance between confrontation & conciliation” that Henry Olsen, from the Ethics & Public Policy Center said your needed to strike in order to keep the progressives happy & the GOP willing to make deals.

            I was most impressed with the way that you handled the “outbursts, jeers & peals of mocking laughter” with a smile & a come-back.  I think you convinced anyone who was watching that you are still sharp & committed to leading us toward a brighter future.

            I hope your trip to Dane County, WI, goes well today. Your plan, to convince labor unions that you are their man, is brilliant. Those are the folks that feel like they are being left behind & that the Dems find them “deplorable.” By visiting them in their training centers, you make it clear that you appreciate them & care for their well-being.

Some diehards will fall for the culture war that Sarah Huckabee was trying to foment in her remarks, but most union workers care more about their pocketbook than about whether kids in school get to learn about our country’s bleak history with enslavement.

In your riff on democracy in the last part of the speech you could have slipped it a sentence about Burma. When you said, “With democracy, everything is possible. Without it, nothing is,” you could have added a paragraph about all of the places in the world which have stalled out because democracy has been sacrificed.

While I appreciated your mention of how the climate crisis is an “existential threat”, I was disappointed that you didn’t use the opportunity to urge citizens to change their habits. Bike more. Eat more veggies. Buy less stuff. Please work on developing the message that we need to change our lifestyles so we are less dependent on consumption of material goods.

I encourage you to spend as much time touting human & intellectual capital as you do touting infrastructure.

BYBS,