Obligatory What Obama Needs To Do Post

Vote for Obama in 2012, or he will eat Ron Paul's grandson, Milton Ayn Pinochet Paul.

So, Obama is putting the finished touches on his speech to Congress as we speak.  Everyone has an opinion about what he needs to do, so I guess I need to offer mine if I'm going to keep my blogging credentials in good standing.

People really like Obama.  His personal approval ratings are very high, in the 60s and 70s.

People really don't like Obama's job performance.  He's mired in the low 40s.  People think the nation is "on the wrong track."  These are bad numbers.

But Obama still beats Perry in a trial matchup and is in a dead heat with Mitten Romney.  As bad as Obama's numbers are, everyone else's are worse.  Much worse.

When he speaks on Thursday, he needs to both sing and preach.  The first part of the speech will be the wonky policy stuff, then he will end with a rhetorical flourish that will bring a tear to a hard man's eye.

The problem is, Obama needs to pick a fight with the Republicans, and he's really not that good at it.

He needs to say, "We had a recovery going, and then the GOP came in and sent it into a tailspin.  They have deliberately sabotaged the recovery in order to hurt my electoral chances next year."

There is no way he's going to say that.

He also needs to attack head on, the prevailing conservative philosophy that government is the problem.  We have had 30 unchallenged years of small government conservatism.  Whatever Clinton might have done if he didn't have to clean up Ronnie and Poppie's debt problems, he steered hard right and stayed in the center for much of his presidency.  Obama has won important progressive gains, but he has not undermined the prevailing CW that government is a problem, that deficits are caused by spending on food stamps for healthy young bucks and that short term deficits can be cured by tax cuts and magical thinking.

He has to attack the GOP's philosophy.  He has to show that this philosophy puts middle class people out of work while funneling money to the top of the income ladder.

If he doesn't do that, then any policy prescriptions he puts forth are irrelevant and DOA.

People want to like Obama.  I bet a lot of normal GOP voters want him to succeed in doing something about unemployment, because they would like to have a job.

Obama banked on being able to make government work in order to demonstrate tangibly that government was able to solve big problems.  But he has run headlong into a party dedicated to destroying the government if needs be to get their way and they'll destroy the economy, too.  And getting their way the last 30 years has, you know, destroyed the economy.

There were signs that Obama might take the gloves off a bit in his Labor Day speech.

We'll see.

Just the future of the country rides on him getting it right.