American Morning
Obama delivers first State of the Union
Washington (CNN) - Citing a "deficit of trust" in government by the American people, President Obama's first State of the Union address urged Congress to erode the influence of special interests and work together to confront the nation's most pressing problems.
In the nationally televised speech Wednesday night to a joint session of Congress, Obama sought to reassure Americans angry and nervous about the pace of economic recovery that his government understood the challenges and would act boldly to meet them.
The president offered populist proposals that some say could reconnect his administration with middle-class Americans, and he offered a plea to end the partisan stalemate in Washington and work for the common good. FULL STORY
Full coverage | Speech transcript | GOP response
Full video: Part one 
| Part two | GOP responds to Obama speech
iReport: Share your state of the union
What did you think of President Obama's State of the Union address? Sound off below.
Obama faces tough sell, analysts say
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://blogs.cnn.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/37/2010/01/obama-pointing-gi-art.jpg caption="President Obama needs to reassure the nation and members of his own party with his speech, analysts said."]
By Ed Hornick, CNN
Washington (CNN) - President Obama's State of the Union speech Wednesday will be a tough sell for millions of Americans struggling under the weight of an economic recession, political analysts said.
"The president will respond as he always does to emergencies: with a speech. In this case, it's his State of the Union address," said David Frum, a CNN contributor and former speechwriter to President George W. Bush. "The Obama team always assumes the best remedy for any Obama difficulty is more Obama."
Frum said Obama's new populist tone, which he said emerged after the Democrats' surprising loss in the Massachusetts special Senate election, might work short-term if he uses it in Wednesday's speech, but it won't work over the long haul.
"If so, it would be a big mistake. It may win the president an immediate bounce in the polls by exciting downcast liberals and progressives," Frum said in a CNN.com commentary. "But that bounce will prove limited and short-lived, and it will come at the expense of more trouble not very far down the road."
What do you hope to hear in President Obama's State of the Union? Sound off below.
Is bipartisanship obsolete?
By Carol Costello and Ronni Berke
When Republican Scott Brown won the race for Senate in traditionally Democratic Massachusetts, he may have ushered in a new mood of bipartisanship.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/01/22/brown.scott.gi.art.jpg caption="Republican Scott Brown won the race for Senate in Massachusetts, a traditionally Democratic state. "]
In a phone call with President Obama, Brown suggested that he and his daughter take on the president in a bipartisan game of basketball. "I said Mr. President, I know you like basketball, I tell you what? Why don't you pick your best player and I take Ayla? And we take you on two-on-two?"
Some in Washington say Brown's gesture was refreshing after a year of partisan rancor. For two longtime lawmakers, Democrat Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and Republican Tim Johnson of Illinois, signs like that are proof that bipartisanship is not dead.
The two independent-minded congressmen are often at odds with their own parties. And even while disagreeing with each other on policy, they have found common ground.
"Dennis is one of my good friends in the process," says Johnson. "I have a tremendous amount of respect for Dennis. We actually agree on some number of issues and we don't agree on others."
Kucinich warns against trapping people by labels. "We're all more than just a label. People here have great depth, they have a sense of humanity and when you connect with that humanity, you connect with people heart to heart."
In an age where lawmakers have become so wrapped up in such party labels – Washington is in a state of ideological warfare. In a recent study, "Congressional Quarterly" said partisan voting in Congress is the worst it's been in 50 years. But it doesn't have to be that way, says Kucinich.
Avlon: Independents looking for alternative to angry politics
Editor’s note: John P. Avlon is a senior political columnist for The Daily Beast and author of "Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America." Previously, he served as chief speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was a columnist and associate editor for The New York Sun.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/01/22/wingnuts.olbermann.king.gi.art.jpg caption="On the left, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann; on the right, Rep. Steve King."]
By John Avlon, Special to CNN
In a week dominated by the aftermath of Haiti’s devastating earthquake and a seismic political shift in Massachusetts, the wingnuts couldn’t help but weigh in and drag the discourse down.
Keith Olbermann went on an epic rant, calling now U.S. Senator-elect Scott Brown a racist and conservative Congressman Steve King managed to politicize the pain in Haiti with talk of refugee deportation.
It’s a cliché to say that some liberals reflexively reach for the race card when attacking political opponents. But in 2010 that’s just one of the weapons in the identity-politics arsenal. And this week, with the Massachusetts special election hours away, Keith Olbermann threw the entire kitchen sink at Republican Scott Brown. Here’s his summation:
"In short, in Scott Brown we have an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, tea bagging supporter of violence against woman and against politicians with whom he disagrees."
I’m not sure which accusation is most offensive or absurd – “supporter of violence against women” might win that low-blow award. But the attempted call to arms apparently didn’t frighten Democrats to the polls and it might have helped alienate independent voters, who went for Brown in record numbers.
Olbermann is a smart, funny guy and his special commentaries are sometimes incisive, but this might have set a record for the most unhinged since he called President Bush a “fascist” and told him to “shut the hell up.”
Is bigger government better?
By Carol Costello and Bob Ruff
The size and role of government, not surprisingly, has been a popular subject of presidential inaugural speeches.
Remember JFK in 1961? “And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”
And Ronald Reagan 20 years later: “….government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
Bill Clinton said this in 1993: “It is time to break the bad habit of expecting something for nothing from our government or from each other.”
And one year ago Barack Obama picked up the government theme in his inaugural address: “The question… today is not whether our government is too big or small, but whether it works.”
What’s interesting is that no matter what each man said about government, government itself just kept on growing. Even conservative President George Bush, from 2001 to 2009, presided over the largest dollar increases in regulatory spending in decades, according to George Mason University.
We went over to the Office of the Federal Register in Washington, DC., to the building where the government stores all the books that list and explain every Federal regulation. The rows and rows of packed shelves are testament to the breadth and depth of government involvement in our lives. In 1951 there were just 41 volumes of regulations. Today there are 222 volumes containing 160,000 pages.
We asked Mr. Libertarian, Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), who ran for president on a platform of small government, what he thought about all this spending and regulation.
“Government always grows,” he told us. “You never see any years where you have less employees (or) the budget actually shrinks. It just doesn’t happen.”
Why does it keep growing?
Democrats point fingers after stunning loss
[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/01/20/brown.newspaper.art.jpg caption="Republican Scott Brown shows off a headline touting his win Tuesday night."]
Boston, Massachusetts (CNN) - Even before the polls closed on Tuesday night, Democrats were distancing themselves from Democrat Martha Coakley and blaming her lackluster campaign for her stunning loss in the U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts.
A top adviser to President Obama rejected assertions that Tuesday's vote was a referendum on the president or Democratic policies and instead took a shot at Coakley: "Campaigns and candidates matter."
For weeks, Scott Brown had been the underdog candidate, running behind in the race to finish out the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's term.
Trailing by double digits a little more than a week ago, Brown had edged ahead of Coakley, campaigning as the pickup truck-driving candidate, capitalizing on voter frustrations and vowing to send Obama's health care bill "back to its drawing board."
Coakley, the state's attorney general, had been considered a shoo-in in heavily Democratic Massachusetts, which hadn't elected a Republican to the Senate in 38 years.
But as Brown gained momentum and Coakley's numbers fell, Democrats rushed big guns to campaign for her, including Obama and former President Bill Clinton.
In the hours after Coakley's concession speech, though, Coakley's pollster Celinda Lake fired back at criticism that she ran a weak and misguided campaign and failed to recognize Brown's surge until it was too late.
Read the full story here
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