I wasn't able to listen to President Obama's speech, but the poignant passage from it first featured in the NY Times' coverage had to be the emotional highlight:
There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. There’s nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill. And this is not a vision of the America I know.
In a flash, Obama reframed the Ryan-House plan as what it really is: deadly unserious. The idea of slashing responsibility from those most able to carry the "burden" of fiscal responsibility and then loading it on the backs of those least able is nothing short of offensive. And Obama said so. Bluntly.
In addition, there's nothing "courageous" about a plan that is so patently designed to appeal only to a narrow and rabidly anti-government base. Ryan's plan is no plan for America; it is raw meat for far-right ideologues. And Obama, in effect, just said so. Bluntly.
The real authenticity that should animate both center and left, however, seemed to come even more so in the last line: "[Ryan's] is not a vision of the America I know." Obama infused a load of American values and treasured American history in that line, for incontrovertibly Ryan's vision is also not that of a Lincoln, or the Roosevelts, or even that of an Eisenhower. It is instead radically plutocratic and distastefully class-warring. We as a nation are neither. And Obama said so. Bluntly.
And for the left's benefit, Obama reintroduced what is merely political reality: "I’m sympathetic to this view [of forestalling budget cuts].... But doing nothing on the deficit is just not an option."
Right or wrong, "The People" whom the left extols as the virtuous voice of democratic government voted, in part, for deficit reduction -- now. In my view, and obviously that of the president, now is the wrong time. But elections do have consequences. Cutting some spending -- now -- is one of them. Hence Obama is only accepting the people's wishes, as well as juggling the resulting and rather brutal reality of Capitol Hill.
Perhaps "the people" will think twice, and more carefully, in 2012 than they did in 2010.