State of the Union: The president makes his case

With the GOP race for president riveting the Washington press corps (as well as those of us in Florida this week), President Obama hasn't been in the news much lately. So his State of the Union address last night provided him a little equal time, sandwiched between Republican debates (the next one is tomorrow night on CNN).

I've never been a huge fan of these SOTU's. They get all hyped up but are never that exciting, even if there are some important policy prescriptions listed in them. Thankfully, the president didn't open it up with the age-old cliché, "The State of the Union is GOOD!," a cue for sympathetic legislators to cheer wildly.

Instead, he said, "The state of our union is getting stronger," and if you go by some important economic indicators it is — though not nearly fast enough for anybody.

But other than extending a yearlong payroll tax cut already agreed upon that has to come together by the end of next month, there doesn't seem to be much that Congress and Obama are going to come together on in 2012, despite what members from both parties may be telling news outlets today.

On another note, a key part of Obama's speech was about tax fairness, which is why White House staffers had to be high-fiving each other when they learned that Mitt Romney would be releasing two years' worth of tax returns hours before Obama addressed the nation.

This article appears in Jan 19-25, 2012.