State of the Union

I'll be in class tonight and will miss the State of the Union address... guess it'll be a YouTube night for me. Like many pundits, Andrew Sullivan and Ezra Klein see tonight as a true test of President Obama's ability to lead.

Let's hope he can.

From Sullivan:

The test of leadership is sometimes staying a course even when all the polls and pols have turned against it on a dime. There are times when a president should preside; but there are also times when he must lead.

I have one simple test: if the health bill dies from neglect and irresolution, Obama is no leader.

He is a follower. He cannot vote present on this one. He has majorities in both Houses and a landslide victory and he is unable to deliver on a core priority in his first year. That's a definition of a failed presidency and it is why the GOP - with nothing to offer the country - decided to make it his Waterloo. They knew and know how gutting this bill and killing reform and suffocating any serious change in this country is their way to a nihilist victory. And such a victory would not be a vindication of Republican policy right now. It would be a perfectly reasonable response to a Democratic party palpably incapable of governing and a president clearly unable to deliver.

If he cannot do this, he does not have the fortitude to be a successful president. And his weakness on this will be rightly interpreted as weakness everywhere else. That applies to foreign policy as well, with Netanyahu and Khamenei and Chavez and Sarkozy all watching to see what this guy is made of.

And from Klein:

Tonight's speech is the most important of his young presidency, and it will be the most revealing of his career. Does he stand and fight for a health-care bill he believes to be a historic and necessary step forward? Or does he back away from it, letting some gestures toward his commitment to the issue stand in for the determined leadership -- and the political gamble -- that would represent real commitment to the issue?

During the campaign, Obama famously told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, "just give me the ball." Today, Obama is the president of the United States. He's got a lot of people screaming at him and cheering for him, and almost as many shouting advice. But he's the guy with the ball. The question is what he does with it.