President does the State of the Union shuffle

I don’t watch TV so I seldom see President Obama giving his endless speeches so I wasn’t as turned off by his 2014 State of the Union speech as others.

Let’s give the president credit. He can emerge from his shambles of an administration and make like the cock of the walk. He can roll off the latest list of bureaucratic stupidities and make the punters think that hope is just around the corner.

Here we are, 50 years from the War on Poverty, 30 years since Charles Murray blew the lid off its failures in “Losing Ground,” and now President Obama is ready for reform of job training.

So tonight, I’ve asked Vice President Biden to lead an across- the-board reform of America’s training programs to make sure they have one mission: train Americans with the skills employers need, and match them to good jobs that need to be filled right now. (Cheers, applause.)

Oh wow! How exciting! This is so hopeful, so encouraging! Why didn’t I think of that: Biden to reform America’s job training!

Earth to liberals: This is why conservatives say that government can’t be trusted to do anything. It takes you chaps 50 years to get around to reforming government job training programs.

I’ve been watching presidents do the old SOTU shuffle now for about 40 years, and it’s getting a bid old even if President Obama can do the song-and-dance act as well as anyone.

If I were the liberal Mr. Big looking on from his smoke-filled room somewhere in Georgetown, I’d be wondering how much longer the old routine would keep bringing the marks in.

For now, it’s working. Why even Lady Marjorie here perked up when the president said:

You know, today, women make up about half our workforce, but they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it’s an embarrassment.

Women deserve equal pay for equal work. (Cheers, applause.)

Yeah! I suppose you and I are the only people who know that, e.g., comparing apples to apples, 20-something single women make about 5 percent more than 20-something single men. (Probably because they are worth it.)

But I get it. The point of the SOTU is to throw out the applause lines not just for the congress-critters but for the Democratic identity group members back home.

It’s a regimental thing.  When you parade the colors before the broken down old veterans they still get a tear in the eye.  Same thing for liberal catch-phrases.  The identity group members can’t help but cheer to: “Women deserve equal pay” “everyone’s right to vote” “cleaner, safer planet.”

You’d never think that, in between sending out the checks, the government has done practically nothing for the last 50 years except obsess over equal pay, voting rights, and the environment.

President Obama talks a good line, and he can sucker-punch the evil Republicans with the best of them. But if I were that mysterious liberal Mr. Big I would be worrying that the Obama years have done nothing to update the act for the 21st century.

I’d be worried that the party of progress keeps itself in power by crude appeals to a tribalism that belongs not to the previous agricultural age but way back with the hunter-gatherers.