State of the Union commentary: President’s poetry strengthens campaign

Is it possible that Barack Obama might yet wring something big from Congress on gun control? Anyone who has spent any time beyond the liberal bounds of the east and west coasts knows how madly most Americans cling to their Glocks and their Berettas. But did you hear the president last night? Did you see that woman cry?

I can’t tell you who she was. Maybe she was a Congresswoman or perhaps one of many guests invited to the annual State of the Union address because she lost a loved one to gun violence in the past several months. I am guessing she was not alone wetting her cheeks, whether in the chamber or in the millions of American homes where normal programming was suspended for the one hour it took President Obama to say his piece.

It was 50 minutes before we got to Newtown and all those other atrocities of last year. There was a lot else he had to get off his chest. He didn’t preface it all by saying “I won last year”; he didn’t need to. So, my Democrat and Republican friends, how about indulging me a little: let’s raise the minimum wage, take climate change seriously, tax the rich more and stop getting austerity crazy. I need to defend the US against cyber-attacks too.

Gabrielle Giffords, the former Congresswoman whose brains were partially blown out by a mad person with a gun, applauded with all her might when Mr Obama finally spoke of gun violence. She can’t clap yet, so she clasped her hands together and shook them. And then, sitting in the gallery, were the parents of Hadiya Pendleton.

“She was 15 years old. She loved Fig Newtons and lip gloss. She was a majorette,” Mr Obama explained. “Just three weeks ago, she was here, in Washington, with her classmates, performing for her country at my inauguration. And a week later, she was shot and killed in a Chicago park after school, just a mile away from my house.”

Congress has his gun control proposals and should vote on them now, the president said. But he didn’t just say it, he proclaimed it as poetry.