Turns out I didn’t miss much

I was planning to liveblog last night’s State of the Union address, but as the hour approached, your humble blogger couldn’t muster the energy for it, and resorted to sporadic  tweets instead. 

As it turns out, that was the appropriate tack, because my lackluster effort to process the speech matched the Obama administration’s lackluster effort to incorporate foreign policy into the speech (FP’s Josh Rogin has expertly parsed the little foreign policy content there was).  As predicted, there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot of international relations content in the SOTU, despite Heather Hurlburt’s best efforts to argue otherwise. 

Politico’s Laura Rozen noted "the seeming downgrading of foreign policy emphasis in the speech," and The Spectator‘s Alex Massie observed "Foreign policy received very little, even perfunctory, attention."  [UPDATE:  oooh, Jeffrey Laurenti has data]: 

[Obama] devoted just 14 percent of his speech to international concerns – a far cry from George Bush, who regularly devoted half his State of the Union addresses to foreign policy and national security themes (and fully 88 percent of the infamous “axis of evil” address in 2002, which laid out the road map for war in the Middle East).

What attention was paid to foreign economic policy was desultory when it wasn’t firmly wedged in Fantasyland. 

In fact, let’s deconstruct that entire section of the speech — it won’t take that long: 

[W]e need to export more of our goods. Because the more products we make and sell to other countries, the more jobs we support right here in America. So tonight, we set a new goal: We will double our exports over the next five years, an increase that will support two million jobs in America. To help meet this goal, we’re launching a National Export Initiative that will help farmers and small businesses increase their exports, and reform export controls consistent with national security.

We have to seek new markets aggressively, just as our competitors are. If America sits on the sidelines while other nations sign trade deals, we will lose the chance to create jobs on our shores. But realizing those benefits also means enforcing those agreements so our trading partners play by the rules. And that’s why we will continue to shape a Doha trade agreement that opens global markets, and why we will strengthen our trade relations in Asia and with key partners like South Korea, Panama, and Colombia.

 Now, let’s see if there’s anything of substance in there:

1)  "We will double our exports over the next five years…"  Well, the President said this would happen, so it must be so!!  I would humbly request that the president also decree that the pull of gravity be cut in half.  The government has an equal chance of making that happen. 

2)  "we will continue to shape a Doha trade agreement that opens global markets…"  The key word there is "shape."  I have every confidence the administration will do this, because they make this pledge in every communique they ever issue.  It’s a tradition now, like playing "Hail to the Chief."  Play the music, pledge to work on Doha, and then go about your business.  

3)  "we will strengthen our trade relations in Asia and with key partners like South Korea, Panama, and Colombia."  You mean, by ratifying the threee trade agreements that have already been signed and negotiated?  Oh, you don’t mean that?  Well, never mind, then. 

State of the Union speeches are usually about domestic priorities, and it’s not surprising that this one played to type.  Still, I would have liked to have seen a more robust effort to link foreign policy priorities to domestic priorities — because the two are more linked than is commonly acknowledged.