A Tedious, Recycled State of the Union

Before the financial crisis, Obama ran on “investing” in education, health care, renewable energy, infrastructure, and so on. After the financial crisis hit, presumably our needs changed, but not Obama’s agenda. Suddenly, what America needed to do to respond to the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression was to again “invest” in education, health care, renewable energy, and infrastructure. And now that the “shadow of crisis has passed,” as he announced on Tuesday, the same investments are needed. Why? Because he said it before, of course.

The same holds true with his foreign-policy agenda. As a candidate, Obama vowed that we needed to pull back from the War on Terror. After the rise of the Islamic State and the metastasizing of jihadist terror around the world, we must stay the course. Even when events deviate from the president’s well-worn script, what matters is that the script never change so Obama can keep talking and talking and talking.