Obama's Legacy
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2015
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“For obvious reasons, there was a lot of bragging in that speech and there was a lot of emphasis on the good economic news,” says Ryan Lizza about the State of the Union. Lizza joins fellow staff writer Hendrik Hertzberg and host Dorothy Wickenden on this week’s Political Scene podcast to talk about President Obama’s speech and how it might shape political debate during his last two years in office. They discuss what the President can accomplish without the support of Congress, the growing bipartisan agreement that income inequality is a major problem, and the likelihood that a failure to act on climate change will detract from Obama’s legacy. “Ten years from now, fifteen years from now, he may be seen as the guy who had the big chance to do something about the catastrophes now engulfing the world and didn’t do enough,” says Hertzberg.
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| 0:44.0 | Things people love. |
| 0:47.3 | This is the political scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about politics. |
| 0:52.8 | It's Thursday, January 22nd. I'm Dorothy Wickendon, executive editor of The New Yorker writers and editors about politics. It's Thursday, January 22nd. |
| 0:55.0 | I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of The New Yorker. |
| 0:58.1 | So the verdict is clear. |
| 1:00.7 | Middle-class economics works. |
| 1:04.0 | Expanding opportunity works. |
| 1:07.1 | And these policies will continue to work, |
| 1:09.7 | as long as politics don't get in the way. |
| 1:12.3 | That was President Obama giving his State of the Union address on Tuesday night. |
| 1:16.5 | Ryan Lissa and Hendrick Hertzberger are here today to discuss what it says about Obama's liberalism |
| 1:21.6 | and how discussions of the poor and middle class are already shaping the 2016 presidential race. |
| 1:30.0 | So, Ryan, for six years now, Democrats have been complaining that Obama's too willing to seek compromise with congressional |
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