Presidential vision for the year ahead: State of the Union address

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS (1.5 pages requested)

My fellow Americans, the past two years have been tremendously challenging for all of us, as well as for me personally as your president. Tonight, I feel that I have to address a specific problem that has emerged since my election and that I fear is undermining the integrity of the constitutional form of government upon which all of us rely to guarantee the effectiveness of this great democratic republic.

As you know, the two-party political system and the bicameral nature of the American Congress is designed to guard against the usurpation of power by any one political party or group. However, in the last two years, a disturbing pattern has emerged in which some of the safeguards expressly designed and built into this system have been misused very deliberately and systematically for the purpose of achieving purely political goals and at great expense to, rather than for the benefit of, the American people. Today, I would like to appeal humbly but sincerely to all of my fellow members of our government and to their supporters in the general public to reject this approach to national politics.

For the last two years, this nation has been mired in political partisanship the likes of which we have never witnessed before, particularly in between election seasons. Almost nothing was accomplished by the 11th Congress because those representing one political party, the minority, have completely shirked their governing responsibility to the American people. Instead of pursuing legislation based on what is beneficial for this nation, they have adopted a strategy of opposing every conceivable initiative and idea, not because they disagree with it on policy grounds, but strictly as part of the political strategy articulated by the former Majority Leader: to make sure that this president's tenure in office ends after four years.

As a result, procedural mechanisms such as the Senate filibuster and others have been systematically exploited and misused for obvious political purposes. This approach, in effect, guarantees that this nation will make absolutely no progress on many of the most important domestic and international issues facing us for almost half a decade. I would like to humbly ask all of my colleagues, my supporters, and the American people to reject this partisan approach to national government beginning with the inauguration of the 112th Congress.