Some Cowboy Advice on the State of the Union

By Patrick Dorinson

Well Mr. President this year’s State of the Union marks the halfway point in your administration and from the look of all the White House folks moving to Chicago it’s also the beginning of your 2012 re-election campaign.

Your amen corner in the mainstream media has once again fallen in love with you as you move to the center. And judging by her latest columns, even former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan has rekindled her love affair with you. Don’t tell Michelle.

And the folks at the alphabet networks, NBC, ABC and CBS are pouring on the coal to change the narrative of your presidency from one of failure to one of resurrection.

Be careful not to read too much into the resurrection thing. It only happened once before in history.

As I read the newspapers and watch the wizards of Washington, oracles of academia and blabbering brigade of political pundits on cable news shows, it looks like you are getting a whole lot of unsolicited advice on what you should say in your State of the Union.

Most of it is bunk because they are not your audience. They just want to go on TV after the speech and say you took their advice.

No Mr. President your audience is a restless nation that despite what [Treasury Secretary] Timmy Geithner says is still mired in a deep economic funk. They are out of work. They are scared of the future. And frankly Mr. President they don’t know if you are up to the job.

Economists say that housing is facing another wave in home foreclosures. The price of oil is almost at $100 a barrel getting us closer to $4 a gallon gasoline jeopardizing an already fragile recovery. Upon further review Christmas sales were weak and not what they originally appeared. And as the New Year begins many states are facing insolvency if they are not there already.

And that is just for starters.

Last year as you so ably said you took a “shellacking.” If you don’t want the next “shellacking” to be more personal so that you have to move back to Chicago, you should stop listening to the fancy pants advisers you have and start listening to the American people.

So before you mount the podium in the venerable House chamber Tuesday night and turn on Mr. TelePrompter, I thought it might be time for some old fashioned cowboy advice.

Too much debt doubles the weight of your horse and puts another in control of the reins.

I gave you this piece of advice here in 2009 and you chose to ignore it. And now the deficits and debt are growing quicker than a cat with his tail on fire. Too bad you listened to Larry Summers and not this old cowboy. If you had maybe you wouldn’t be standing in front of Speaker Boehner Tuesday night.

You have piled on some much debt your grandchildren won’t ever be able to repay it.

You better have a message of cutting spending and fast. I hear you are going to ask for more spending. I would advise against that but since you didn’t take my advice before my guess is you’ll ignore it again.

By the way, that was a great party for our Chinese creditors. — It’s always nice to have a visit from the ones controlling the reins.

When your head’s in the bear’s mouth is not the time to be smacking him on the nose and calling him names.

Don’t use the speech for any partisan cattle crap as much as it would make Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean happy. The pack of Republican bears in the House chamber won’t take too kindly to that nor will the Tea Party folks back home. Kill them with kindness.

And if you feel compelled to throw a partisan elbow, remember what my mother used to say. An Irishman is someone who can so cleverly tell you to go to hell that you’ll want to buy a ticket.

When there’s a drought everybody is dry. When it rains, everybody gets wet. Mother Nature makes no distinctions.
The recession got everybody, Democrats and Republicans alike, wet—it made no partisan distinctions. Reach out to the Republicans and let them know if America fails we all fail. Make the speech about the nation and don’t use the personal pronoun “I” too much.

The both of you are probation for the next two years so you better get together and start fixin’ what needs fixin’ and get done what needs gettin’ done.

Sorry looks back. Worry looks around . Faith looks up.

You can’t change the November election results and you can’t worry about the next election even if you’re getting ready to raise $1 billion to get re-elected.

So start putting a little more faith in the American people to turn this country around and a little less in an intrusive big government to do so. The only way government makes money is to crank up the printing press.

Finally, word is that in your speech you are going to talk about competitiveness.

So here is my last piece of advice: Get government out of the way so that Americans can compete.

Do that and you might just get re-elected. Don’t do that and you can start looking for a place for your presidential library.

Good luck…you’re gonna need it.

Patrick Dorinson blogs at The Cowboy Libertarian. He lives in California.

Read more at The Audacity of Logic