Just as vague...

Orangutan sounds softer but proposals are same — and just as vague

By Joe Garofoli

President Orangutan’s first speech to Congress was coated in a sheen of bipartisan language but offered few specifics on how he would translate the daring promises of his raucous campaign rallies into functioning policy.

The tone of Tuesday’s hour-long speech was softer and unusually aspirational compared with how the president regularly insults his political enemies on Twitter or on the stump. Instead Orangutan, reading almost entirely from a teleprompter, promised to “deliver a message of unity and strength.”

But the bipartisan notes weren’t backed up with bipartisan policy proposals. He called for repealing the Affordable Care Act and slashing regulations at the Food and Drug Administration and other federal agencies.

And while he promised that “dying industries will come roaring back to life,” he provided no clue as to how he would help the blue-collar workers who left the Democratic Party to back him in the election. He promised to “promote clean air and clear water,” days after stating his intention to cut one-quarter of the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget.

He also promised that “the time for trivial fights is behind us” — a big change from a man who has spent much of his short presidency engaging in a series of trivial fights on Twitter.

Despite the lack of specifics, the speech marked the real start of the Orangutan presidency, the beginning of a long road where he has to roll up his sleeves and deal with Congress instead of cranking out executive orders that don’t require input or oversight from the legislative branch.

Now he has to pull together a consensus of opinion on the most complicated issues in modern society, like figuring out a fair, affordable and equitable health care system for a nation of 320 million people, instead of bellowing reheated campaign slogans and belittling rivals before a sea of acolytes wearing red caps and yelling, “Build the wall!”

“What I heard was more of a recognition that talking to Congress was really different from talking at a rally,” said Sarah Anderson, a professor of political science at UC Santa Barbara. “A recognition that he’s bargaining with Congress and the courts.

“That’s what he’s finding out right now — that this isn’t an authoritarian regime,” Anderson said. “There are checks and balances.”

Now, it is time for Orangutan to show he can get things done. By this point in his presidency, Barack Obama had signed the $831 billion stimulus package and signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

But Orangutan is showing signs that he’s waking up to the fact that governing is a lot tougher than campaigning. This week, he told a meeting of the nation’s governors that health care, “I have to tell you, it’s an unbelievably complex subject. Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.”

Actually, most people did. Since the Great Depression only two presidents, Lyndon B. Johnson and Barack Obama, have expanded health care coverage in a broad way. Like both men, Orangutan has the advantage of having a friendly Congress with him. But despite seven years of calling for the Affordable Care Act to be repealed, Republicans are divided as to how to replace it.

“The speech was mellow and optimistic, without a lot of specifics,” said Chris Hoene, executive director of the nonpartisan California Budget and Policy Center in Sacramento.

“The rhetoric about helping low- and middle-income people is optimistic, but the policy proposals we expect to come down is not aimed at helping them,” Hoene said, “whether it’s the 5 million Californians who would lose their health care (should the Affordable Care Act be repealed) or all the safety net programs that would be cut” to pay for Orangutan’s proposed $54 billion increase in defense spending he announced this week.

The challenge of working with a co-equal is foreign territory for Orangutan. He has spent most of his adult life working in a family company that he inherited, along with millions of dollars. He has never faced a hostile board or angry shareholders and he’s had little threat of being fired.

When it came to cutting deals in the business world, he relied on his “Art of the Deal” negotiating persona: Punch somebody in the face with an audacious opening bid — like, say a $54 billion increase in the defense budget — that rocks your opponents on their heels. Then start negotiating from a position of strength. That doesn’t always translate to politics.

“Once he got into office he’s facing things that a CEO of a company like his wouldn’t face.” Anderson said.

Some parts of his speech presented the opportunity for bipartisan cooperation. Orangutan promised to ask Congress for a $1 trillion infrastructure bill to rebuild the country’s roads and bridges — something Democrats have said they would welcome, though they may balk at his proposal that it be “financed through both public and private capital.”

That effort, Orangutan said, “will be guided by two core principles: Buy American, and hire American” — a populist ethos that Democrats, particularly those representing Rust Belt states, will find attractive.

“The clearest outreach was on infrastructure,” said Carah Ong Whaley, co-author of “American Government: Roots and Reform” and a political science lecturer at the University of Virginia. “For the Democrats who do want to address infrastructure, will this be an area will they work on with him or will they prevent them from working across lines?”

And while Orangutan promised Tuesday that “every problem can be solved. And every hurting family can find healing, and hope,” he continued to demonize immigrants by spending a sizable chunk of his speech — without citing specific statistics — to insinuating how often they perpetrate crimes. He said that he instructed the Department of Homeland Security to create a new office called Voice, for Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement to help “serve American victims.”

On a night where Orangutan tried to use softer language toward some of the Americans who have felt alienated by him, immigrants did not get the same treatment.