PRESIDENT DELIVERED WHAT WE NEEDED TO HEAR IN HIS STATE OF THE UNION MESSAGE

By

Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq.

January 25, 2011

Washington, DC – President Barack Obama delivered the message in his State of the Union address that the people needed to hear. In sports vernacular, he hit another homerun; he made a touchdown; he gave us a three pointer! 

He gave us our marching orders for what we all must do further to save the Union.  The President inherited a country that was rapidly sliding down hill for poor people, jobless people, people suffering from discrimination, and those who were just hanging on already.  He inherited a huge debt, and had to hit the ground running before he was sworn in.  He truly has worked to put our union back on track.  When he took office, America was in such a deep hole that all of his energy was spent trying to fix what his predecessors broke.  In other words, he had to work to get us on level ground before he could begin to move us from the ground up.  That’s happening now.

Because of actions he took early, the stock market is steadily up.  Corporations are beginning to hire.   The Affordable Health Care Act is making a difference in the lives of people.  Many students can now remain on their parents’ health care plan while they are in college.  He’s brought a lot of troops home from Iraq.  He’s gotten us past “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.  He’s given us a Women and Girls’ Council.  He’s signed the Violence Against Women Act.  He gave us the Lily Ledbetter Act his first week in office.  He’s gotten us the START Treaty.  He encouraged the Republicans to move off their “no, no, no” act.  He got a tax cut for us.  He got unemployment insurance extended for those who need it.  People are feeling the hope again. 

He’s defied the pundits who never seem to think anything the President does is as good as what Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton did.  Many of them are the same ones who didn’t think much of either of them while they were in office.  Funny how history seems to have absolved those two of their sins!   

President Obama won an election because he was brilliant, because he touched people.  He brought people out to vote who never voted before—white people, Black people, Asians, Native Americans, and Hispanics.  He brought us admiration and credibility around the world. He made us extra proud of our nation and we believed for a minute our nation had, for the most part, gotten past race.  It sounds silly now, but just for a minute some of us believed that.

This President has accomplished so much, but still it’s not enough for most of the pundits who think they are smarter than this President!  Some of them just can’t get over the fact that Barack Obama knows what he is doing!  They’ve never heard of the critic not counting.  They actually think they are smarter than the President who is steadily getting American back on the right track after many before him played a part in derailing us or keeping us from being all that America can be.

No President has ever had to deal with the disrespectful way the opposition treats this President.  Yes, opposition includes many otherwise yellow dog Democrats. We hear them every day.  We have too many in the media (even some so-called comedians) trying harder to bring the country down because we finally have a President who is smarter than they are and they are afraid that unless they say something silly about the President, they won’t get on the nightly news!

(Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq. is National Chair of the National Congress of Black Women, Inc.  To reach her, call 202/678-6788 or E-mail her at info@nationalcongressbw.org.  Web address: http://www.nationalcongressbw.org)