(HOST) President Obama’s State of the Union speech was almost entirely devoted to domestic and economic issues. This morning commentator and veteran ABC News diplomatic correspondent Barrie Dunsmore examines the little that was said about foreign policy.
(DUNSMORE) One of my jobs for many years, both in Washington and overseas, was to analyze what presidents from Nixon through Clinton had to say about the state of the American union as it applied to its relations with the rest of the world. Sometimes that involved much of the speech – other times less so – but there was almost always something considered to be important at the time.
In that context, what was striking about President Obama’s seventy-two minute speech Wednesday evening, was that only nine minutes were devoted to national security issues, and I spotted no significant headlines in that section. Considering that the United States is currently engaged in two wars and an on-going battle with international terrorism, that may seem remarkable – but perhaps it’s not.
On this occasion, Mr. Obama was busy trying to rescue his presidency. And at this point at least, the public anger and disenchantment relates almost entirely to the struggling economy, burgeoning deficits and the stubbornly high rate of unemployment. National security is currently near the bottom of the list of voters’ concerns.
In dealing with those domestic problems Obama’s tone was sometimes feisty in a serious speech appropriately tempered by humor and self- mockery. He did not retreat from any of his signature domestic programs, including health care reform, and he proposed some new more modest efforts at job creation. The president chastised Republicans in Congress for their single policy of saying "No" to everything. He warned his own Democrats that they still had the largest majority in decades, and in his words, "…the people expect us to solve some problems and not run for the hills."
Putting some spine into Congressional Democrats, who have been reeling since the Kennedy Senate seat was lost earlier this month, is Mr. Obama’s most urgent task if he hopes to salvage any of his domestic agenda this year.
Perhaps another reason President Obama had little to say on the subject of foreign policy is that he had already made several major such speeches this past year. In his address at West Point, and in his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, he set forth his philosophy for dealing with the world – ideas which put him firmly in the camp of American centrists and realists. Theoretically, at least, that should attract support from some mainstream Republicans, as well as Independents and the majority of Democrats – but if that support exists it is not a political factor at the moment because domestic political issues are using up all the oxygen.
However, Iran and Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Israelis, the Palestinians, and Islamic terrorists are not going away. It may be possible to pretty much ignore these issues for one night in January. But it is a virtual certainty that, during the coming year, some or all of the above problems will force their way back onto the urgent global agenda, whether it’s convenient or not.