MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
We're going to talk about the State of the Union address and other political topics now with our regular Friday commentators E.J. Dionne and David Brooks. Welcome back.
DIONNE: Good to be here.
DAVID BROOKS: Good to be here.
BLOCK: E.J. Dionne, do you think that's a successful strategy to bit by bit dismantle the health care law, sort of death by a thousand cuts?
DIONNE: Democrats could talk about all the things in the bill that people actually like. And it, by some measures, it really is increasing in popularity. So, they allowed that - the Democrats to fight a fight again that they had lost the first time. And they began on a negative and they show no signs of having something to put in its place. So I don't think that was the ideal way for them to start, but I'm not a member of the tea party.
BLOCK: David Brooks, do you buy that? That maybe the health care bill is becoming more popular and that the strategy from Democrats and the White House to use specific case examples of people who benefited from the law are working?
BROOKS: But if you want to really control government, you got to take care of Medicare, Social Security. You got to at least begin talking about it.
BLOCK: So you think he's in the right. That may be a lonely place to be, E.J. Dionne. Do you think Paul Ryan, who is the chair of the House Budget Committee now, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, has a foothold here? Do you anybody's listening to him?
DIONNE: Nonetheless, I think that Ryan is going to have trouble with this, if you will, the tea party wing. And you're already seeing this tension between the leadership - Ryan, and speaker Boehner - and these conservatives who say, no, we can find $100 billion. Good luck to them.
BLOCK: David, what will you be listening for on Tuesday night?
BROOKS: Well, he has had a swing, and that swing is among moderate Republicans. If you look at the polling, all the movement has come among people who are moderate Republicans, wanted to register a protest against the Democrats, but now are sort of uncertain.
BLOCK: And independents, too.
BROOKS: And independents as well. And to me the crucial thing in the State of the Union is he's obviously going to talk about growth and competitiveness. But is it short term or is it long term? How much of the emphasis on short term trying to create jobs before the next election? How much of it is laying down the fundamentals for growth over the next decades, including big tax reform, big infrastructure spending, big education reform, the things that won't bear fruit in the next two years, but will in the long term. That to me is the central tension that I don't believe the administration has quite settled.
BLOCK: E.J., State of the Union thoughts?
DIONNE: Now, I think the conservatives are going to do two things. They're going to say, actually, he's retreating and then they're going to criticize him for not retreating fast enough. But my hunch is consolidation is a better way to look at it. In the speech we just heard, I think he's going to talk a lot about manufacturing because the old manufacturing states are hurting. They are critical to the next election. And I think that's going to be a central theme for the next couple of years.
BLOCK: State of the Union not often where we turn for lofty rhetoric, felicitous turns of phrase, is there any moment that you think that he might be able to craft out of this speech on Tuesday?
DIONNE: Well, you know, it is, we celebrated this week, the 50th anniversary of John Kennedy's inauguration, one of the great inaugural speeches ever. And what struck me in listening to it again was how much hope there was in public endeavor: together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths. It would be nice to have a little lift and confidence that we can accomplish things together again.
BLOCK: That was a speech. Hard to argue with that one.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
BROOKS: I'm more in favor of those speeches, so let's let Obama give a few little speeches saying, hey, we'll try to make the economic climate a little better. It's probably the best we can do, but at least be realistic.
DIONNE: Think of the progress we made out of those promises. The desert's not much.
BROOKS: We got Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
DIONNE: We have a lot of the - and it's a false choice. You can like both of those speeches, David.
BLOCK: A little uplift from E.J., a little pessimism from David. What a way to end.
BROOKS: Realism.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: Thanks to you both. David Brooks of The New York Times and E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution.
BROOKS: Thank you.
DIONNE: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.