2013 SOTU Address

               Standing before the nation and a joint session of Congress, President Barack Obama delivered his fourth State of the Union Address. In an earlier column I presented my predictions for his speech, and while I successfully predicted some of his key points, he also hit on some unexpected topics.

                In my first column I predicted Obama would intensely discuss gun control, and Obama did just that. Surprisingly, Obama waited until the final 20 minutes of his speech to discuss gun control, but when he did, it was emotionally charged and was met with a mixture of tears and cheers from the audience. Obama said the reform proposals deserved a vote in Congress whether or not they would pass. He also made an emotion connection by saying the families of gun violence victims deserved to have the proposals voted for.

                Going off his previous State of the Union Addresses, I made the prediction Obama would address the topic of America’s education system, and he did. Obama discussed education reform from preschool to college. He said it was crucial for American children of all walks of life to have an equal opportunity to be enrolled in preschool in order for them to have a fair start in their educational lives.

                Obama also said the nation’s high schools must change and do a better job preparing students for work or further education. This drew one of the largest ovations of the speech, from both sides of the audience. While I successfully predicted Obama would discuss education, I also thought he would talk about teachers as he had in past SOTU addresses, however, he spent his time on education discussing the actual quality of the education American children are receiving.

                For the past few months the topic of immigration has been a political hot bed, which is exactly why I predicted Obama would speak about it. He has also discussed the topic multiple times since stepping into office. Like he did for gun control and education, Obama laid out specific plans for how he planned to tackle the issue of immigration control.

                Obama said he plans to strengthen border patrol and create a more responsible way for immigrants to earn citizenship. He wrapped up his discussion on immigration by repeating “Let’s get it done,” multiple times while most of the crowd responded with a standing ovation.

                Obama discussed American troops not just once, but twice during his SOTU address making another prediction correct. Also as I predicted, Obama addressed women now being allowed to be on the front line.

                Obama not only thanked the troops for their service as I anticipated, but he announced that 34,000 troops will be returning home from Afghanistan during the next year. He also declared by the end of next year, America’s war in Afghanistan would be over.

                In addition to thanking troops for their selfless service, Obama also said the government needs to provide better healthcare for active troops and veterans.

                Shockingly (and I say that sarcastically), I also correctly predicted Obama would say the state of the union is strong. He not only said the state of the union is strong, but bragged that during the past four years the nation had “cleared away the rubble of crisis.”

                While I successfully predicted four components of his address, Obama also discussed several topics that took me by surprise, including energy reform and how the nation needs to do a better job preventing climate change.

                Tax reform was another major point during Obama’s SOTU address that I did not predict. The entire time he discussed the topic, he repeatedly mentioned the need for Congress to work together to make the necessary changes to improve the tax codes.

                Following a theme from his inauguration speech, Obama spoke about women’s equality in his SOTU address, which is another topic I failed to predict. The major part of this was the need for equality of pay for both men and women.

                Perhaps the biggest surprise (at least to me) of Obama’s SOTU address was the time he spent discussing the need to strengthen the nation’s cyber defense.

                With the exception of a few points, specifically cyber defense, Obama’s SOTU speech was predicted by simply researching his previous four SOTU speeches, current event and even his inauguration address just three weeks ago.