A populist president, or just politics as usual?

Last Tuesday, President Obama delivered his third and perhaps final State of the Union address. Given that we’re in an election year, it was understandably more of a stump speech than a major policy address. It offered Americans many warm-and-fuzzy-sounding initiatives like new investigations into the mortgage crisis and support for the American manufacturing community.

The president highlighted his one major accomplishment of 2011, the death of Osama bin Laden. He also patted himself on the back for pulling the troops out of Iraq.

On the economy, it was hard for him to take credit for much. Instead, he passed the buck and claimed that the failures in our economy were due to the lack of action in Congress.

One of my Facebook friends reminded me of a terrific quote by George Bernard Shaw: “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”

The bottom line is, Obama used the State of the Union address as an opportunity to appeal to his left-of-center base by referring to populist themes such as “fairness” and “equality for all Americans,” proposing to increase taxes on the rich and calling for more government regulation.

He stated that in the past couple of months, the nation’s economy has been thriving. Tell that to the 8.5 percent of Americans who are still out of work and the millions who are no longer counted as unemployed because they’ve given up looking for jobs. If we were to count them and the underemployed, the unemployment rate would be closer to 15 percent.

On taxes, he said that he is going to push for the so-called Buffet Rule, named for billionaire Warren Buffett, which proposes taxing capital gains at the same rate as wages. Obama then pointed to Buffett’s secretary, who was in the audience, and claimed that she pays a higher tax rate than her billionaire boss.

Obama’s class warfare motto of taxing the rich will only lead to more economic fatigue. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who delivered the Republican Party’s response, pointed out, “If we fail to shift to a pro-jobs, pro-growth economy, one in which government is meant to serve the people rather than supervise them, there will never be enough revenue to pay for our safety net or national security.”