Obama invokes ideals of fairness, equality in Kansas

OSAWATOMIE, Kan. – President Barack Obama rolled out the major themes of his re-election bid in a speech in which he sought to capture public concern about rising economic inequality and wrap his policies in a call for a “fair shot” for America’s middle class.

Growing inequality “is the defining issue of our time,” Obama said in a nearly hourlong address here Tuesday. “This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. At stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home and secure their retirement.”

The speech came at a strategically important point for the president. After a politically damaging summer, in which the long-drawn debate over raising the debt ceiling eroded his standing with voters, Obama and his aides spent much of the fall trying to find ways to regain control of the public agenda. As they did so, the Occupy Wall Street protests highlighted public concern over inequality – raising the volume on a debate that many Democrats welcome, but which Republicans have denounced as “class warfare.”

One central problem the Democrats have faced is that although polls have shown deep concern over inequality and anxiety about the future of the middle class, many voters have remained unconvinced that either party’s policies will address those problems. Some Democratic strategists say that Obama’s Ivy League education and dispassionate demeanor have helped make that a particular problem for him, causing a significant number of voters to identify him as part of “the 1 percent.”

The new language, which Obama is expected to repeat often in the months to come, seems designed to directly address voter concerns about inequality. It pulled together the more-populist, harder-hitting themes Obama has tried out during the last couple of months.

To heighten the speech’s impact, White House aides chose a venue with historical and political echoes. Just over a century ago, Teddy Roosevelt traveled to this same small eastern Kansas town for one of his best-known addresses. In it, he laid out his “New Nationalism,” with its call for progressive reforms and an active federal government committed to reining in the power of concentrated wealth.

Citing that precedent allowed Obama to put himself in a long line of national leaders who have sought to ally themselves with the middle class. Noting that the average income of the top 1 percent of the population has grown more than 250 percent over the past two decades while the income of most other Americans has stagnated, Obama said “this kind of inequality – a level we haven’t seen since the Great Depression – hurts us all.”

“Inequality also distorts our democracy,” he added. “It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder.”

He sought to draw a sharp distinction between his views and those of his GOP opponents.

“I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share and when everyone plays by the same rules,” he said.

Republicans, he charged, offer “the same policies that have stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for too many years. Their philosophy is simple: We are better off when everyone is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.”

The Republican theory of trickle-down economics, he said “speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. It fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It’s never worked.”

The speech was notably light on new policy initiatives. As he has repeatedly, Obama called on Congress to extend the current payroll tax holiday, and he pushed for the Senate to confirm Richard Cordray, the former Ohio attorney general who is the president’s nominee to head the Consumer Protection Bureau.

“Republicans in the Senate refuse to let him do his job,” Obama said. “Does anyone here think the problem that led to our financial crisis was too much oversight of mortgage lenders or debt collectors? Of course not.”

Instead of a long list of proposals, Obama emphasized his overall philosophy. Explicitly comparing his proposal to Roosevelt’s, Obama noted that the 26th president had been called “socialist” and a “radical” for advocating a strong federal government. In doing so, he implicitly suggested that current Republicans, some of whom have aimed the same adjectives at him, had abandoned their party’s legacy.

Roosevelt’s speech in 1910 backed child labor laws, which GOP hopeful Newt Gingrich has recently attacked as “foolish,” and a strong inheritance tax, which Republicans in Congress have sought to repeal. He warned against concentrated wealth and pushed for a ban on corporate contributions to political campaigns – a ban that Obama defended but which the U.S. Supreme Court overturned in 2010.

Republicans scoffed at Obama’s efforts to align himself with Roosevelt, whose calls for corporate reform came when there was very little regulation of business. Roosevelt’s talk of regulating the “use of wealth” for the national good meant something different in 1910, said Rep. Tim Huelskamp, who accused Obama of trying to “exaggerate class warfare and embolden the cause for more government.”

Obama advisers, however, said the speech’s themes are ones that the president will focus on during the campaign.