By Wes Pedersen
Circle January 24 on your calendar. That's the day you will hear the most important political address of 2012 -- President Obama's mandated report on the State of the Union.
This is the speech that will formally open Obama's bid for re-election. It is the speech that will give his opponents full rein throughout the year to savage him on his domestic and foreign policies.
So far, his GOP and Tea Party critics have stayed fixated largely on domestic matters, particularly, and with just cause, the economy. Now, with the President setting forth bold new defense measures around the world, the antis can focus on geographic and military areas they have largely shunned in past months.
The president will have a list of things he can brag about or at least recolor as achievements. It cannot realistically be long, but it will seem so when recapped by skilled speechwriters.
He can point to a slight reduction in the numbers of unemployed in the U.S., but he will probably forget the distressing numbers of workers who have sought jobs without success or then stopped looking at all.
He must somehow defuse criticism of his neglect of the homeless and the needy.
He should, in fairness, commend the businesses that have made recovery if not a full-scale reality, at least a positive nudge forward despite the clutter of rules, regulations and eternal paperwork demanded by government.
How he will handle the problem of the Occupy forces demanding economic and cultural changes is something all pundits are anxious to see.
In the sections devoted to international affairs, he will not be shy in noting his personal direction of the execution of Osama bin Laden. His opponents can only carp that it took him three years to get around to the task.
Obama can also claim credit for the launch of the Arab Spring, which has seen vicious regimes toppled in Egypt and Libya. It was the Obama decision -- to offer help to any group of protesters or insurgents who opposed a tyrannical leader -- that spurred uprisings through the Middle East.
The president will push the notion of peace in the area even though the Taliban and al Qaeda remain strong in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen. He is extremely vulnerable on this and on his use of drones to carry out high-command assassinations of terrorist leaders.
The focal point of the State of Union talk will, of course, be the major overhaul of the military ordered by the president. His handlers are busy painting it as the Obama plan to reduce the armed forces while making them far more efficient and deadly. In truth, it's another version of the “Victory Through Air Power” thesis by a former Russian Navy pilot that shook the military around the world in the 1940s.
The change is dictated by the need to reduce manpower in this recessional era, plus the fact that our naval vessels that have ruled so much of the world for decades are often old and out of keeping with the defense needs of theses technology-rules times.
This at a time when China in preparing to challenge us for control of the East's seas and beyond. China has been building influence throughout the world, in Afghanistan and other Middle East countries, including Iran, and in Africa, Latin America, and, yes, Europe.
Young U.S. policymakers tend to forget that the Chinese government is ruled by this edict by Mao Zedong: “All political power comes out of the barrel of a gun.'
The U.S. public has largely been prevented from becoming aware of China's aims, thanks to the administration's single-minded focus on the Middle East under Mr. Obama.
The media that should have been alerting the public to the China threat have failed miserably in that regard.
Obama will need to duck and weave on the matter of space exploration. Budgetary demands forced him to cancel the U.S. shuttles to the International Space Station. We are hitching rides to the station with Russian astronauts. That is a situation that may not last; Moscow, hurting financially, is studying a drastic cut, if not the demise, of its space program. That would leave us without a carrier to ferry our astronauts to the space center.
The president will counter that space negative with a recap of the administration's plans to ultimately put a man on Mars. Meanwhile, China is boasting that it will put a man on the moon in 10 years or so.
Elsewhere, the president may attempt to capitalize on a slight hint of improved relations with Myanmar achieved by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on her recent visit to what used to be Burma. Progress is much to be desired there, since the unpredictable rogue state is pursuing its own atomic weaponry.
Mrs. Clinton has received precious little administration praise for her notable achievements in the foreign field. It would be smart PR to give her credit for braving the pitfalls of foreign diplomacy with such grit and poise.
Mr. Obama will be walking on thin-shelled eggs when it comes to North Korea and its untested new leadership.
Iran, however, merits stops-out presidential examination.
The president, of course, is under attack by opponents for a lax leadership that allegedly has permitted Iran to plunge full speed ahead toward development of nuclear weaponry. Now he must also deal with the death sentence just imposed in Tehran on a former U.S. Marine accused of spying for the U.S.
Iran's threat to attack U.S. ships in international waters was defused to an unknown degree when the Navy rescued Iranian fishermen held captive by international pirates. The Iranian foreign minister broke protocol and thanked the American sailors in the most courteous terms.
Obama must almost certainly be thinking how nice it would be if he could get the Navy aces who performed the rescue to come up beside him as he makes his speech.
Nice, yes, and he could do it as a commander in chief saluting a team of heroes. But versions of it have been done by other presidents, and the public may have tired of “the old PR” technique by now.
Still, it's a natural. And what member of Congress in Mr. Obama's Capitol audience could possibly decline to join him in saluting these and others heroes who serve their country with gallantry beyond the ken of most Americans?
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Wes Pedersen is a retired Foreign Service Officer and principal at Wes Pedersen Communications and Public Relations Washington, D.C.
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