After a State of the Union Address, we’re used to a rebuttal from the other party. This year, two of them turned out to be on the schedule. There was the one you probably missed -- “You see, growing up, I had only one good pair of shoes. So on rainy school days, my mom would slip plastic bread bags over them to keep them dry...” -- because who doesn’t switch to a little actual entertainment after an hour listening to any president? That Republican “response” was delivered by new Iowa Senator Joni Ernst (she of the pig castration ads). The second one, not to be given until March 3rd, will be by the latest Republican senator andcongressman, a fellow named Bibi Netanyahu. He will appear before a joint session of Congress, highlights from which will be all over the news undoubtedly showing both chambers rising repeatedly for standing ovations -- some 29 times on the last such occasion -- while the Israeli prime minister eviscerates President Obama’s negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. Previews indicate that Netanyahu will also encourage Congress to pass further sanctions against Iran to ensure that those talks will be deep-sixed and the way paved for just what we all need: one more war in the Middle East. A second audience will also be listening: Israeli voters, just two weeks before they go to the polls to decide whether Bibi is to remain in office.
All in all, call it an illuminating State of the Union moment, starting with the president’s fantasy address. It was, after all, filled with proposals that might have been meaningful in year two of his first term but that now have as much chance of being enacted into law as the National Zoo in Washington does of housing a unicorn. There was, however, one arena in which Obama might have assumed that something he said wouldn’t just be his own version of a Netanyahu-style election speech, laying the groundwork for the next Democratic candidate in 2016. That, of course, was foreign policy.
