“We will move forward together, or not at all -– for the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics.”
Those, in my mind, were the most important lines President Barack Obama uttered on Tuesday during his third State of the Union address to Congress.
More than the policy promises, more than the political goals, those words registered with me.
They made for nice headlines on Wednesday morning, but most reports focused on the meat of the speech: the promise to curb spending without any set plan, the promise to funnel cash into education, the promise to fix the still-ailing economy.
Some of those will be kept. Others will not.
But one thing is for sure: If the country can’t come together, there will be no forward momentum.
This became all the more apparent on Jan. 8, when a gunman opened fire at a rally hosted by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, killed nine and seriously injuring the congresswoman and 20 or so others.
Almost immediately, the media began blaming the political rhetoric in the country. Although as time went on, it seemed the gunman was plain crazy rather than tea party crazy or Palin crazy.
So even though Sarah Palin really isn’t to blame, it’s interesting so many minds went that direction.
That would seem to be proof that the political rhetoric in this country is bananas, but we’re really not doing anything to fix it.
The Tea Party is still fighting. The anti-Tea Partiers are still pissed.
And while all that is happening, unemployment is still sky high. People are still starving to death. Kids are still getting a crappy education.
I don’t really have any confidence in the people who are already in power fixing that.
I really only have confidence in our group of people to repair the political rhetoric, to take care of the neediest in society and to repair the country as a whole.
Us. We’re the generation of people who will need to fix the mistakes the people in control now have been making.
We’re the ones who will be paying for the Great Recession for the rest of our lives.
We’re the ones who will usher the country, and the world, into the 3000s.
We’re also the ones who have watched this country heading down to the level it’s at now. I’m not being unpatriotic, but you’d be hard-pressed to really examine where we are now and say it’s never been better.
I’m not typically an optimistic person, but, in this one case, I’m willing to be positive.