In last week’s State of the Union address, President Barack Obama gave a signature speech filled with hope, emotion and a call to action. It was also a rather sensual affair, according to GOP strategist and CNN contributor Alex Castellanos who said, “A speech by Barack Obama is a lot like sex. The worst there ever was is still excellent.” While that really speaks more to Castellanos’ personal experience than that of the actual speech, the essence of the comment rings true. Although Obama gave another stirring address, it was really just more of the same. If Obama’s goal was to incite action amongst a stale and uninspired Congress, he should have taken a more direct route. Obama should have channeled his inner Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY).
Instead, Obama chose to channel his inner Amway salesman in the way he tried to sell Congress into moving on from its seemingly permanent state of gridlock. He promised to “make this a year of action” and tried to pressure Congress into action with a multilevel marketing approach. He stated he would enact an executive order to raise the minimum wage for certain government contract workers and encouraged Congress to do the same for all American workers. Apparently the hope is that if government workers are happy with their minimum wage hike, then they will tell their public sector friends about it, who will then, in theory, pressure their local congressman to follow suit. What Obama should have done is taken a page from the aggressive and sometimes violent playbook of Grimm and physically threatened members of Congress.
Obama has struggled to get anything done in the face of a Republican-led House of Representatives that has worked to block him at almost every turn. When confronted with this type of adversity and opposition, nothing would resonate louder than a threat to throw them all off the Capitol Hill balcony. If only our normally eloquent and emotionally stable president could be more like Grimm and say this to Congress the next time they try to impede progress. “Let me be clear to you, you ever do that to me again, I’ll throw you off this f—— balcony.” These were the exact words used by Grimm as reported by the Daily News as he confronted a wayward reporter just before Obama’s State of the Union address.
During his speech Obama also reprimanded Republicans for working against him in his efforts to pass the much-embattled health care law that finally was ratified without Republican support in 2010, saying, “The American people aren’t interested in refighting old battles. Let’s not have another 40-something votes to repeal a law that’s already helping millions of Americans.” Obama should have followed that up by taunting Congress with an additional call to violence by using another one of Grimm’s go-to lines: “No, no, you’re not man enough, you’re not man enough. I’ll break you in half. Like a boy.” Yet another direct quote, as reported by the Daily News, by a man who basically gave the speech Obama should have given just minutes before Obama took to the podium.
This is not to suggest that Obama didn’t give a powerful and inspiring speech. He spoke to the U.S. and promised he would work towards equal pay for women and relieve the U.S. of its dependence on oil by investing in “fuels of the future,” but he simply doesn’t have the menacing tone and physical stature of Grimm to have much of an effect. As Grimm has shown, when something isn’t going your way, get in the face of your agitator, flex those neck muscles and in an uncontrolled and enraged voice, fight back with threats of violence. And if all else fails, Obama can always go with another Grimm favorite, as reported by the nymag.com, of impersonating an FBI agent and force them all up against a wall saying, “All the white people get out of here,” which of course would be a sure-fire way to clean out Congress. What this country needs is for Obama to get a little grim with his personality, and if he doesn’t have it in him, then I’m voting Grimm for POTUS in 2016. Why the hell not?
[email protected]