President Barack Hussein Obama ended the State of the Union address with the ritualistic intonation: “the state of our union is strong.” But if the SOTU is to serve its intended Constitutional purpose, after “congratulating the men and women of the 112th Congress, as well as your new Speaker, John Boehner” and “pray[ing] for the health of our colleague - and our friend - Gabby Giffords," Obama should have begun by telling Congress, “It's no secret the state of our union is under significant duress.”

Then, instead of misleading Congress by claiming that, “Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again,” he should have soberly informed legislators:

The budget deficit is expected to reach $1.5 trillion in 2011, the highest ever. Home prices slipped in 19 of the top 20 metropolitan areas in November of last year, suggesting the real possibility of a double-dip in home prices that will continue to stunt our economic health. The U.S. Federal Reserve warns that economic growth is not occurring at a rate that will improve the nation's labor market, meaning that the unemployment rate is likely to remain at or above 9 percent for most of the year.

Sustaining the American Dream has never been about standing pat. It has required each generation to sacrifice, and struggle, and meet the demands of a new age. To win the future, we'll need to take on challenges that have been decades in the making.

We have to make America the best place on Earth to do business. We need to take responsibility for our deficit, and reform our government. That's how our people will prosper. That's how we'll win the future. And tonight, I'd like to talk about how we get there.

Then Obama should have outlined in broad strokes a plan to reduce the deficit, allow the housing market to sort itself out without government intervention, encourage businesses to hire new workers and make capital improvements without additional government spending, and rework his healthcare reform law so that it does what he said it would to bend the cost curve without undermining the quality of care Americans receive – and exhorted Congress to get it done:

What comes of this moment is up to us. What comes of this moment will be determined not by whether we can sit together tonight, but whether we can work together tomorrow.

I believe we can. I believe we must. That's what the people who sent us here expect of us. With their votes, they've determined that governing will now be a shared responsibility between parties. New laws will only pass with support from Democrats and Republicans. We will move forward together, or not at all - for the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics.

Thank you, G-d Bless You, and may G-d Bless the United States of America.

Instead, Obama recycled the platitudinous talking points and failed policies that he’s been flacking since he began campaigning for the presidency in 2007:

In a few weeks, I will be sending a budget to Congress that helps us meet that goal. We'll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology - an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people. …

[C]lean energy breakthroughs will only translate into clean energy jobs if businesses know there will be a market for what they're selling. So tonight, I challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: by 2035, 80% of America's electricity will come from clean energy sources. Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal, and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all - and I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make it happen. …

We will put more Americans to work repairing crumbling roads and bridges. ...

Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80% of Americans access to high-speed rail, which could allow you go places in half the time it takes to travel by car. For some trips, it will be faster than flying - without the pat-down. As we speak, routes in California and the Midwest are already underway.

There were also several glaring disconnects:

China [is] investing in research and new technologies. Just recently, China became home to the world's largest private solar research facility, and the world's fastest computer. …

No country has more successful companies, or grants more patents to inventors and entrepreneurs. We are home to the world's best colleges and universities, where more students come to study than any other place on Earth.

What Obama left unsaid was that China’s “research” consists of industrial espionage and theft of the intellectual property of our innovative companies, inventors and entrepreneurs.

And Obama first talks about the free enterprise system fostering innovation, then contradicts himself by claiming – incorrectly – that government "historically" provided funding for cutting edge scientists and inventors:

What we can do - what America does better than anyone - is spark the creativity and imagination of our people. We are the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices; the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers; of Google and Facebook. In America, innovation doesn't just change our lives. It's how we make a living.

Our free enterprise system is what drives innovation. But because it's not always profitable for companies to invest in basic research, throughout history our government has provided cutting-edge scientists and inventors with the support that they need. …

Robert and Gary Allen are brothers who run a small Michigan roofing company. After September 11th, they volunteered their best roofers to help repair the Pentagon. But half of their factory went unused, and the recession hit them hard.

Today, with the help of a government loan, that empty space is being used to manufacture solar shingles that are being sold all across the country. In Robert's words, "We reinvented ourselves."

Leaving aside the fact that Thomas Edison’s most important invention, the incandescent light bulb, is being regulated out of existence (fourth item), he received venture capital to finance his work from investor/philanthropist Spencer Trask. Know why the Allen brothers are not in the same league as the Wright brothers? Because the Allens relied on taxpayer funds to make a go of it - for some reason, they were unable to raise venture capital, like Edison - whereas the Wrights financed their years-long attempts to conquer flight by making and selling bicycles and plowing the proceeds into their experimental sideline (p 114). A more recent example belying Obama’s claim of government “investment” in American innovation: To get the money to get their start-up, Apple, off the ground, Steve Jobs sold his Volkswagen van and Steve Wozniak sold his programmable calculator – and a couple of weeks later Jobs made a sale that brought in half the $1300 seed money the two had kicked in.  

The American Dream “drove the Allen Brothers to reinvent their roofing company for a new era,” but getting the money to do so from other Americans – some of them small business owners with their own hopes, drive and ambition – turns that dream into a nightmare for those of us who can’t or won’t be the beneficiaries of government largesse.

Also, while pointing out that “[o]ver the next ten years, nearly half of all new jobs will require education that goes beyond a high school degree, and yet, as many as a quarter of our students aren't even finishing high school” Obama stacks the odds against these students finding low- and semi-skilled jobs by also calling for Congress to “address the millions of undocumented workers who are now living in the shadows” – by which he means, devise a path to citizenship for them so they snatch up the jobs in construction, landscaping and hospitality that high school dropouts could do. 

And then there’s this whopper:  

[W]e have to confront the fact that our government spends more than it takes in. That is not sustainable. Every day, families sacrifice to live within their means. They deserve a government that does the same.

So tonight, I am proposing that starting this year, we freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years. This would reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, and will bring discretionary spending to the lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president.

The budget deficit is $1 trillion, so freezing spending at current levels will not give the American people “a government that lives within its means.” Even if Obama is “willing to eliminate whatever we can honestly afford to do without,” the $400 billion those cuts save is chump change – especially when the “investments” he proposed will increase federal spending by an additional $20 billion, according to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation  

Finally, in addition to the jokes Obama’s speechwriters had included (“[T]he Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they're in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them in when they're in saltwater. And I hear it gets even more complicated once they're smoked.”), there were these unintentional howlers (emphasis, The Stiletto):

We will put more Americans to work repairing crumbling roads and bridges. We will make sure this is fully paid for, attract private investment, and pick projects based on what's best for the economy, not politicians. …

In the coming year, we will also work to rebuild people's faith in the institution of government. Because you deserve to know exactly how and where your tax dollars are being spent, you will be able to go to a website and get that information for the very first time in history.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman thinks Obama sent mixed signals: “We care about the future! But we don’t want to spend!” Perhaps because Krugman apparently didn’t pick up that “invest” is a code word for “spend,” he got it exactly backwards: “We don’t want to spend because we care about the future.” If only Obama had had been clear enough for Krugman to understand (you know, he’s not as good with numbers as you’d expect an economist to be).

Click here, here, here, and here to find out what other pundits and pols liked and didn’t like about the speech.

Editorial Note: The Stiletto greatly appreciated The National Journal posting a draft copy of the speech a couple of hours before Obama delivered it (according to a spokesperson, the publication received the transcript from "a trusted source" and "Recognizing the clear news of that, we moved it.") because she was able to get a jump on spitting out a stream of snarky tweets like these: 
 

Knowing what Obama was going to say before he said it – although that’s the case with most of his speeches – allowed The Stiletto to pay more attention to the optics. For instance, both Obama and House Speaker Boehner were wearing purplish bipartisan ties; Boehner kept biting the inside of his cheek, perhaps because he’s not used to sitting still for that long without a smoke; Obama tends to smile or laugh at his own jokes before anyone else does – and even if no one else does.