When reviewing President Obama’s State of the Union speech last night. I’m reminded of the old Frank Sinatra song where he crooned, “I’ll do it my way.” President Obama essentially told congress to go take a hike and then he got specific, listing off a lot more executive orders than I thought he would. He’s very serious about this. But look, this is a president who has nothing to lose. He’s not up for re-election and he wants to cement his legacy. We saw this with Bill Clinton when he started reeling off plenty of executive orders late in his second term too.
A couple other interesting tidbits: he didn’t criticize republicans on immigration because he knows house leadership is trying to roll something significant out to its members and he didn’t want to raise any bad blood there. Also, when he talked about the minimum wage, there seemed to be more bi-partisan support for that in the chamber last night so this may be an area where both sides could come together. Polls show that a majority of Americans favor a minimum wage increase.