Obama voices optimism in his final State of the Union address

Military Times noted ahead of last night’s address that unlike his predecessor, the president has largely shied away from devoting significant portions of his States of the Union addresses to veteran issues and the military.

President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016.

Rep. Susan Davis said the President’s speech appealed to America’s “better angels” and harnessed the American spirit. “We need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion”, Obama said unequivocally. The president says IS is made up of killers, fanatics and twisted souls, and that the US will hunt them down and destroy them.

With presidential candidates including Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republican Marco Rubio in the audience, Obama structured his speech around four questions, the last of which was: “How can we make our politics reflect what’s best in us, and not what’s worst?”

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A year from now, when I no longer hold this office, I’ll be right there with you as a citizen-inspired by those voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness that have helped America travel so far. And he challenged us, as a nation, to “face the future with confidence in who we are, what we stand for, and the incredible things we can do together” rather than “respond to the changes of our time with fear, turning inward as a nation, and turning against each other as a people'”.

The President says he wants to work on bi-partisan issues like criminal justice reform as well as prescription drug and heroin abuse.

Warning that “instability will continue for decades” in many parts of the world including Afghanistan and Pakistan, Obama said both al-Qaeda and ISIS pose a direct threat to the United States and America’s foreign policy has to be focused on the threat from ISIL and Al Qaida. They do not threaten our national existence. “Period. It’s not even close”, he said.

He said America is experiencing “extraordinary change, and that’s always a little bit unsettling”.

Obama ended his speech with a poetic plea for cooperation in democracy.

Most of Ryan’s words and gestures were toward Vice President Joe Biden, the man he debated on national television in 2012 when Ryan was Mitt Romney’s choice as the Republican vice presidential candidate. Republican leaders who vowed to make him a one-term president failed at that, but they’ve had great success in undermining many of his policies and tarnishing his brand.