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"In the beginning of a change, the PATRIOT is a
scarce man, and brave and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the
timid join him, for then it cost nothing to be a PATRIOT."
--Mark Twain 1904
One of the most sacred privileges adult Americans have is the right to vote. Yet, Liberals use 'proof ' as a wedge issue citing it places too much inconvenience on those who must prove their right to vote and obtain identification. However, they say nothing about the complexities of signing up for health care which requires ownership of a computer and some skill level. Just more hypocrisy to win votes.
James Moran and Jim Baucus are leaving The House and Senate and apparently now feel free to speak the truth about Obamacare. Moran says the program will fail because not enough healthy young will sign up and Baucus has stated it is a train wreck. It is amazing how leaving political life takes a burden off one's tongue so they can speak their mind openly and honestly.
On the other hand, Hillary is seeking the office of the presidency and she has begun her 'de-crapping' process by saying she regrets Benghazi.
Amazing. leave lies behind once you vacate office and begin them once you seek office.
Demonizing The Tea Party and other threatening opponents (Palin, Gingrich, Romney,Christie, Ryan etc,) is a tactic liberals us and it has proven effective because, for whatever reason, far too many Republicans are too laid back or unwilling to fight even if that means getting in the gutter with their detractors.
Finally, in order to take attention away from the impending collapse of Obamacare, Sen, Reid and Obama have come up with another wedge issue - income inequality, to deflect attention from the administration's failures
Under our economic system the goal is to provide an opportunity for everyone to maximize their capacity to earn based on their ability. The system is not designed to accomplish equal outcomes which is a pursuit only fools or disingenuous politicians believe is achievable.
Income inequality is simply a false hope ploy to turn attention away from Obama's disastrous and failing presidency. (See 2 and 2a below.)
Some news pundits are saying Obama 's SOTU Address is small ball. Perhaps they are referring to his own appendages.
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It is all about education:
Lipstick in School (Priceless!)
According to a news report, a certain private school in Washington was recently faced with a unique problem. A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom.
That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick, they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints.
That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick, they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints.
Every night the maintenance man would remove them, and the next day the girls would put them back.
Finally the principal decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night (you can just imagine the yawns from the little princesses).
To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required.
He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.
Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.
There are teachers ... and then there are educators.
There are teachers ... and then there are educators.
And this is the very best of American character:
This is just great. Sometimes kids will really surprise you. Must watch!!!
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Fred Barnes has written an article with which I totally concur and yet, though I have often thought to write about it I have not until now. I believe the immediate response by Republicans or Democrats to the opposite party's President's SOTU Adress is dumb. For all the reasons Barnes enumerates and then some.
First of all it comes too late in the evening and second , i always see it as immediate carping rather than a thoughtful response because of the immediacy factor. (See 3 below.)
Dick
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1)Netanyahu: We innovate to survive
Addressing the World Economic Forum, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose to characterize Israel as "the Innovation Nation".
23 January 14, Globes correspondentThe following is the text of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to the World Economic Forum at Davos:
"Many of you have been to Israel or are already in Israel. I don't mean as tourists, but as investors, and if you're not, I hope that by the end of my talk, you will be. Israel is often called the Start-Up Nation. I call it the Innovation Nation. The future belongs to those who innovate. Those who don't innovate, whether in companies or in countries, will fall behind. Innovation is the only way to consistently add value to your products and services in an increasingly competitive global economy. And Israel is a global center for innovation, and by that I mean two things. It's a center not only for science and technology, but for the indispensable ingredient of entrepreneurship. It's the man or woman who has an idea sometimes a child almost, young men and women who have an idea. And that idea takes science and technology and turns it into a workable plan that can actually profit and grow. So Israel is the epicenter of world innovation right now.
"But before I tell you about it, I have to briefly digress because you mentioned the fact that I was here in '97. I digress on something that you cannot innovate on. You must have an economy that follows the rules of economic gravity. They are no different in Israel or in Nepal or in Columbia or anywhere else. And unless you keep to fundamental rules, the platform that you seek to have to have all these thousands of start-up companies take off. They won't take off they'll crash and sink with your economy.
"So to have an economy that is run soundly, you have to observe certain principles. The first one is very simple, but I say that to those of you who are in the audience who run states. The most important rule, number one is: don't spend over time more than you bring in. You can't afford it. And the second is, of course to maintain a sound macro-economic policy. I say that because we have done it in Israel and we are doing it now. To do that is not easy.
"A short time after I was here, in 2003, I became the Finance Minister. The economy was shrinking. Inflation was growing at 7% a year. Our unemployment was at 11%. One of our major banks was in danger of collapse. It would have taken our entire banking system with it, and you know what that does. We've already learned what that does. So, when I took over as Finance Minister, I sought to give an explanation to the Israeli public of what it is that we have to do. And what we had to do then was what we have to do and are continuing to do now.
"I described my first day in the Israeli army, in the paratroopers. The commander put us all in line and he said, "Now, you're going to take special race," and he pointed to me, the first man on the line. He said, "Look to the man on your right and put him on your shoulders". I did. He was a pretty big guy, about my size. The next guy, he said, was the smallest man in the platoon. He said, "Put the guy to your right on your shoulders". And he got the biggest guy in the platoon. And the third soldier, who was a big guy, received a small person; and so on. And then the commander blew the whistle and I could barely take a few steps. The little guy who was carrying the biggest guy in the platoon collapsed. And the third guy shot forward like a rocket and took the race.
"I said in the international economy I said then, I say now in the global economy, all national economies are pairs of a public sector sitting on the shoulders of a private sector, who has to carry the race.
"In our case, ten years ago in Israel, the guy at the top, the fat guy, the fat man became too fat and we had to put him on a diet. Hard to do; we had to cut government spending. We had to give a lot of oxygen to the thin man at the bottom, which meant cutting taxes; and we did. And then we had to remove all the barriers to the competition, ditch a fence, a wall, so that the thin man could run forward and compete. What we did then, we must do now; and we are. We just passed a bill in the government to fight cartels and monopolies, and I think that this is most interesting, the most important condition. It's a prerequisite for innovation, requiring no innovation, but requiring a lot of political will and a lot of clarity. So conceptually, it's very easy to do. Politically it's very difficult, but necessary.
"And since then, we've grown at roughly 4.6% a year with the decade that has followed. We've brought down our debt to GDP ratio from over 100% to about 67%, where it is now. We've brought down our inflation and we've brought down our unemployment. It's now about 6%. So we have that macro-economic platform, and any of you thinking of coming to Israel, you're coming to a well-managed country. We have our problems, as does everyone, but we manage it.
"Now, innovation. It's not enough to have some macro-economic policy. You know, nobody ever got rich by balancing their checkbooks. You just avoid bankruptcy. But it doesn't make you prosperous. What I've just described doesn't make you rich.
"But Israel is becoming prosperous because of something else, and that is the ability to add that value through innovation. And the question is: why is it? What is it that we have, aside from good macro-economic policies, aside from market reforms, what is it that makes Israel this nexus of high technology? Because we have, as I said, thousands of start-up companies. And people have tried to crack the code of Israel. You have endless delegations coming to us from many countries and they are trying to figure out: can we do what you do? We don't mind we try to share with everyone, as I'm trying to do here. But I want to tell you why I think it would be very useful for you and us to make partnerships. There is something special that we have in Israel. Everybody has their own specialization. Everybody has their own advantages. Here's our advantage: the concentration of exceptionally gifted hi-tech start-up companies in Israel, I believe is a function of five things.
"First, a curse that has been turned into a blessing: our defense needs. We have had to have a very robust defense, so we take the best and the brightest of our young people in the military, and we put them in our various operations and then three years later, they come out. This is a perpetual machine that produces knowledge workers and knowledge entrepreneurs who are very, very gifted. This is reason number one, and I think that this produces a human resource that is unique.
"The second is research, we have excellent research institutions and universities. You know some of them of course, the Technion, the Weizmann Institute and our other exceptional universities. They produce an inordinate share of Nobel Prize winners for Israel and I think that tells you a lot of what it is. We also spend 5% of our GDP on R&D. I think it's the a bit less than 5%, but it's still the highest number of any country. Third, I think there's a special culture.
"The Jewish people have always treasured education and knowledge. In ancient times we were effectively the only literate people that I know of, because every father teach his son, not his daughter but his son how to read the Bible. And that brought us through the Middle Ages and into modern time with literary capacity. That was unusual. When the walls of the ghetto broke down with the French Revolution, that discipline burst out into many, many areas: into physics and mathematics, into chemistry and so on. There was a culture there. So, from the Talmud to Einstein, the Jewish people were always asking questions, truth was never finite. It never ended. There was an iterative process from Jewish communities around the world trying to find out what is the right thing, what is the true thing? And that questioning mind, I think, is something that is in our culture and I think adds very much to our capacities.
"Fourth, size: we're very small. I mean, really small, like the size of New Jersey or Wales. And so everything is close by and everyone is close to everyone else. Everybody competes with each other and collaborates with each other. There is an ongoing vibrant cross fertilization. So technology that is used for missiles can be put in a camera in a pill that goes into a digestive system to find out how healthy you are and where you are not healthy. The technology that is used to track data flow is used to track water flows and so on.
"And the fifth reason I think is because we have no choice. I don't think any people in the world has been given the situation of the Jewish people, and to survive, we had to innovate. We didn't have abundant natural resources. We were outnumbered; we were facing constant threats. Our neighbors even imposed upon us an economic boycott. Some world powers imposed upon us a weapons boycott. We had to innovate to survive. The birth of modern Israel, remember, was an innovation. The rebirth of the Hebrew language was an innovation. The rebirth of agriculture in our land, something we hadn't done for 2,000 years, was an innovation. It changed our capacities in a very, very short time and we became a key player in the world community.
"This penchant of these five factors that converged together has created a unique situation where is this innovation nation, and we produce more conceptual products per-capita than any other country on Earth. I think most of you, possibly all of you, know this. So the question is: what can Israel give you?
"I think in a nutshell, we can be your science and technology incubator. And I think for all of you, for any business and for any country, the ability to create, to have R&D centers or R&D investments or product development investments that allow you to seize the future, to be constantly on the cutting edge is a competitive requirement for all of us. I think that low tech is disappearing. Hi-tech seeps into every crack, into every corner, changing the face of our world. I've just come from an illuminating luncheon with some of the leading IT executives and companies in the world, and it's very clear that there is an abundant opportunity here, tremendous opportunity the internet of things and the internet of everything. Everything is moving very, very rapidly. Everything is becoming digital. And Israel is active in just about every field, just about every field. I can't say every field, but in just about every field that I heard discussed in Davos and that I hear that you are discussing, Israel is there.
"I recently met the head of an international company that has R&D operations around the world. His company presented a problem to all their offices. He said to me that only in Israel was he told that he wasn't asking the right question. By the way, I get that every five minutes as Prime Minister, but these are very valuable insights. These are out of the box insights that make the difference; they give you the competitive edge.
"So I think that for countries and companies alike, the ability to come and partake in this Israeli incubator in your specific field is something that will enhance your competitive advantage. I have no doubt about that, and many of you, as I said, are doing it, and as I learn from talking to you yesterday and today, you're thinking of expanding it and competing for those minds and those talents."But there are two areas that I want to draw your attention to in the vast scheme of things this is changing and it's changing beyond belief everywhere in health, in science and technology. We're digitizing Israel we're doing a Digital Israel, running fast fiber throughout the country, and we can see the possibilities are endless, both in healthcare and in delivering classes and delivering quality of life that is unheard of, in closing social gaps between those who have and have not. Everybody must have. Everybody must have the ability to be there and we're talking about, for example, the Arab youth of Israel or the Orthodox getting them to this new world I think is important. It closes the gaps and it could happen as well in our region as a whole. But there are two areas that are specifically addressed in Israel that I draw your attention to.
"The first is sustainability, sustainable development and Israel leads in questions water, food, renewable energy and many others. I'll give you an example on water. We need water and there's not enough water in the world, or it's not distributed in the right way and sometimes even if it's there, it's not clean. Our population has increased tenfold and our rainfall is half of what it was when Israel was founded. But we don't have a water problem. Why? Because we lead the world in re-using water. We're the number one recycler of water, a little less than 80%. The next country is 25%. Whose cows produce the most milk? Don't guess: it's Israel. It’s a computerized cow. Every "moo" is computerized and we increased the productivity. And this is something that can be available to populations across the world. We do make it available. In food, in dairy products, in water, in energy when you think about sustainability, think Israel. 
"And there's another area that I specifically talked about an hour ago, which I think is important. All the limitless possibilities that you see on the internet are being challenged by one thing and that is the question of cyber security, or if you will, cyber insecurity and the question of the invasion of our privacy. Is the age of privacy over? The major engine of global economic growth is the internet. The internet has to be protected. You would not leave your bank account open or money on the table or your door open, but effectively unless we have that protection, everybody is exposed. There are no rules of the game and we enter chaos. So Israel leads in the question cyber protection without which the internet economy cannot move forward.
"We believe that the hundreds of companies that have been established in Israel in the last few years hundreds in cyber security can be your partners. We know that the major cyber firms are already in Israel and they are discovering how true that is, but I think that every country and every company today has a vested interest to have the protection of privacy and cyber security. These are not always identical. There's often conflict between the two, but it is something that we in Israel think that we can contribute to. I think that you should also know that we are making, as a government a massive investment in this area. We intend to be in the top three I think we are in the top three in the question of cyber security and cyber protection. We believe that we should safeguard the individual. We think that individuals around the world, millions and millions of people, billions of people, should know that their accounts are inviolable, that their money is safe, that their privacy is assured. This is the world you want to see and Israel can help make that world a realization.
"So I encourage you to come in and join us with this, and I think this will be good not only for you and not only for us, but also for peace. The investment in the growth of the Israeli economy is good for our society and it's also good for our neighbors, whether they realize it or not. I believe that in the peace negotiations, advancing the economic peace alongside the political peace one does not replace the other, but it could facilitate the other. I think this is a tremendous contribution to peace. I think it's a way to also close gaps within Israel and between Israel and its neighbors. That may not be evident yet between us and our neighbors, but I think it will be evident in the future.
"So I think this is an investment in peace, an investment in the economic peace assists the development of political peace. It could be of great benefit to all our neighbors, but especially to the Palestinians because we've had some beginnings of cooperation, including in the hi-tech field, between Israeli entrepreneurs and Palestinian entrepreneurs. I believe it could also be a force that would move the entire region forward, but of course the region, as you know, has other problems which we will discuss. Israel has so much to offer the Middle East, to correct a great misperception. Israel is not what's wrong with the Middle East; Israel is what's right in the Middle East, and I think our relationship with our neighbors doesn't have to be a zero sum game; there could be great gain for all.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"So my message to you is very simple: the future belongs to those who innovate. Israel is a great seller of innovation. This is an invitation to the innovation nation. Israel is open for business; it's open for your business. Please come and join us! Thank you.
2) The Inequality Bogeyman
By Thomas Sowell
During a recent lunch in a restaurant, someone complimented my wife on the perfume she was wearing. But I was wholly unaware that she was wearing perfume, even though we had been in a car together for about half an hour, driving to the restaurant.
My sense of smell is very poor. But there is one thing I can smell far better than most people -- gas escaping. During my years of living on the Stanford University campus, and walking back and forth to work at my office, I more than once passed a faculty house and smelled gas escaping. When there was nobody home, I would leave a note, warning them.
When walking past the same house again a few days later, I could see where the utility company had been digging in the yard -- and, after that, there was no more smell of gas escaping. But apparently the people who lived in these homes had not smelled anything.
These little episodes have much wider implications. Most of us are much better at some things than at others, and what we are good at can vary enormously from one person to another. Despite the preoccupation -- if not obsession -- of intellectuals with equality, we are all very unequal in what we do well and what we do badly.
It may not be innate, like a sense of smell, but differences in capabilities are inescapable, and they make a big difference in what and how much we can contribute to each other's economic and other well-being. If we all had the same capabilities and the same limitations, one individual's limitations would be the same as the limitations of the entire human species.
We are lucky that we are so different, so that the capabilities of many other people can cover our limitations.
One of the problems with so many discussions of income and wealth is that the intelligentsia are so obsessed with the money that people receive that they give little or no attention to what causes money to be paid to them, in the first place.
The money itself is not wealth. Otherwise the government could make us all rich just by printing more of it. From the standpoint of a society as a whole, money is just an artificial device to give us incentives to produce real things -- goods and services.
Those goods and services are the real "wealth of nations," as Adam Smith titled his treatise on economics in the 18th century.
Yet when the intelligentsia discuss such things as the historic fortunes of people like John D. Rockefeller, they usually pay little -- if any -- attention to what it was that caused so many millions of people to voluntarily turn their individually modest sums of money over to Rockefeller, adding up to his vast fortune.
What Rockefeller did first to earn their money was find ways to bring down the cost of producing and distributing kerosene to a fraction of what it had been before his innovations. This profoundly changed the lives of millions of working people.
Before Rockefeller came along in the 19th century, the ancient saying, "The night cometh when no man can work" still applied. There were not yet electric lights, and burning kerosene for hours every night was not something that ordinary working people could afford. For many millions of people, there was little to do after dark, except go to bed.
Too many discussions of large fortunes attribute them to "greed" -- as if wanting a lot of money is enough to cause other people to hand it over to you. It is a childish idea, when you stop and think about it -- but who stops and thinks these days?
The transfer of money was a zero-sum process. What increased the wealth of society was Rockefeller's cheap kerosene that added hundreds of hours of light to people's lives annually.
Edison, Ford, the Wright brothers, and innumerable others also created unprecedented expansions of the lives of ordinary people. The individual fortunes represented a fraction of the wealth created.
Even those of us who create goods and services in more mundane ways receive income that may be very important to us, but it is what we create for others, with our widely varying capabilities, that is the real wealth of nations.
Intellectuals' obsession with income statistics -- calling envy "social justice" -- ignores vast differences in productivity that are far more fundamental to everyone's well-being. Killing the goose that lays the golden egg has ruined many economies.
2a) Kurt Vonnegut's State of the Union
Updating a story about government-mandated absolute equality.
By Bret Stephens
The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
—From " Harrison Bergeron " (1961), a short story by Kurt Vonnegut
The year was 2019 and Americans were finally on their way toward real equality. Not just equality in God's eyes, or before the law, or in opportunity.
They were going to be equal every which way.
All this equality was due to bold new government action. There was the Decent Wage Act of 2017, which pegged the minimum wage to the (inflation-adjusted) average hourly wage of 2016. There was the NEW-AMT, which set a 55% minimum federal tax rate on individual income over $150,000 (or 80% for incomes above $500,000). There was the Unemployment Insurance Is Forever Act of 2018. There was the 2018 De Blasio-Waxman CEO Pay Act, which mandated a 9-to-1 ratio between the highest and lowest paid person in any enterprise.
Happily, none of this harmed the economy in the slightest. Higher minimum wages have "no discernible effect on employment" ( Schmitt, 2013). High marginal tax rates have no effect on productivity and business creation (Piketty-Saez, 2011). Preserving jobless benefits puts money into the hands of consumers and thus stimulates the economy (Zandi, as usual). As for the 9-to-1 pay ratio—that's just plain fairness, OK?
Getty Images
New rules on income weren't the only way America was achieving equality. Thanks to the efforts of Attorney General Thomas Perez, disparate outcome lawsuits were changing the country's public culture in unexpected ways.
For example, the average height of NBA players for the 2007-08 season was just under 6 feet 7 inches. The average American male is 5 feet 9 inches. Patently unequal, patently unfair. Mr. Perez demanded that the NBA establish an average-height rule that would require each team to offset taller players with shorter ones.
Americans quickly adapted to the Midget-Monster rule, as it was lovingly known, though alley-oops were never quite the same.
Another industry transformed by the new rules was Hollywood. For "The Bourne Equilibrium," Matt Damon returned to the title role of Jason Bourne, a former super-assassin now entirely at peace with himself and the world. For his efforts he was paid $330,000 (or $130,000 after federal, state and local taxes), which is still nine times the salary of the second-assistant key grip. It was a far cry from the $20 million he was paid for the 2007 "Bourne Ultimatum" but, as he said, "it was totally worth it" because he now has no choice but to send his children to public school.
Fashion also changed. Victoria's Secret models were henceforth required to parade down catwalks wearing horrible masks resembling bearded Princeton economists. Fox News came out with a roster of all-male, paunchy middle-aged anchors.
And what about Republicans? Though most conservatives were resistant to the Equality Movement, some found the new political environment congenial to their anti-elitist aims.
There was the Grassley-Amash De-Tenure Act of 2016, which abolished the "monstrous inequality" of college-faculty tenure. That was soon followed by the Amash-Grassley Graduate Student Liberation Act of 2017, ending the "master-slave" relationship between professors and their teaching and research assistants.
More controversial was the Grassley-Gowdy De-Ivy Act of 2018, requiring all four-year colleges, public or private, to accept students by lottery. Besides its stated goal of "ending elitism and extending the promise of equality to tertiary education," many conservatives saw it as a backdoor method of eliminating affirmative action. Liberals countered that it had precisely the opposite effect.
Still, it was not enough for Americans to promote equality within America. Also necessary was to seek equality with other nations. In 2017, Sen. Rand Paul joined with Oakland Rep. Barbara Lee to cap defense spending at no more than 2% of gross domestic product. "Brazil only spends 1.5% of their GDP on defense, and they've never been invaded," said Mr. Paul. "Canada spends about 1.2%, and they've only been invaded by us. Maybe the lesson is that a big military makes us less secure, not more."
In the summer of 2018, a software engineer at Los Alamos uploaded detailed blueprints of a Trident missile warhead to the Internet. Mr. Paul praised the engineer, who fled to Ecuador, as "civil disobedient," like Martin Luther King Jr., and noted that many scholars believe nuclear proliferation—or nuclear equality—makes the world a safer place.
Of course, not everyone was happy with the emerging utopia. From his yacht 100 miles off the coast of Marin County, hedge- fund billionaire Tom Perkins wrote bilious letters to The Wall Street Journal, which, mysteriously, the Journal saw fit to publish. Fortunately, investigative ace David Brock was able to establish that Mr. Perkins's real name is Emmanuel Goldstein, and promptly created a Two Minutes Hate program on Media Matters for America, which was very popular.
And then came the State of the Union speech. From the hushed chamber of the House of Representatives, a young Texas congressman named Harrison Bergeron yelled "You lie!" as the president spoke about the joy Americans felt as the promise of equality was finally realized.
Shhhhhh! whispered the rest of the House, in absolute unison. And President Elizabeth Warren carried on.
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3)
Fred Barnes: The Curse of the State-of-the-Union First Responder
Replying to a presidential speech on national TV is a plum job, right? Guess again.
Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the fourth-ranking House Republican, will deliver the GOP response to the State of the Union address Tuesday night, just minutes after President Obama finishes. She'll be speaking to a national TV audience. For a little-known Republican whose district covers the eastern third of the state of Washington, this looks like a plum assignment.
Only it's not. History is not on her side. Nor is the schedule, the staging, the press or anything else. Responses by the out-party have been part of the State of the Union ritual since 1966. Yet there's never been a truly successful one. Indeed, Ms. Rodgers is unlikely to win accolades, elevate her party or advance her career. No responder, Republican or Democrat, ever has.
That Mr. Obama will overshadow her is inevitable. He will speak in a House chamber packed with members of Congress, Supreme Court justices (not all of them), cabinet secretaries and foreign diplomats. He'll get standing ovations. The press galleries will be filled.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.) is slated to deliver the GOP response to the State of the Union address this year. Associated Press
Ms. Rodgers will be a lonely figure amid the majesty and grandeur of the evening. She will speak to a television camera in a room in the Capitol CBCRQ -20.00% —no pomp, no audience, no ovations. "It's a setup for failure," says politics professor Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia. "If it were a prize fight between the president and the responder, the referee would stop it."
Ms. Rodgers won't have time to fashion a real response. Her talking points will have been entrusted to a teleprompter before she has heard a word of the president's speech, much less digested any of it. The best she can do is criticize the president's policies and offer Republican alternatives. The risk here is that her remarks will consist of partisan boilerplate, which has been the case with many past responses.
Another disadvantage, Mr. Sabato says, is that "far fewer people recognize the out-party spokesperson . . . I've heard loads of people say, 'Who's that?' " Ms. Rodgers, 44, will need to introduce herself. Her bio may help. She's the only female member of Congress to give birth to three children while in office.
She was first elected in 2004, but this is her debut on the national stage. Inexperience doesn't help. When Rep. Paul Ryan gave the Republican response in 2011, he was jolted by the countdown to the moment when he would begin talking. "Boom! There you are with the American people," he recalls. "For some reason, your mouth goes dry." He popped a cough drop beforehand to compensate.
Mr. Ryan made small fixes in his response after listening to Mr. Obama. He had wisely brought along his own teleprompter operator, who quickly downloaded the changes. But Mr. Ryan was a newcomer to the highest level of political communication. In 2012, as Mitt Romney's vice-presidential running mate, Mr. Ryan delivered a prime-time speech at the GOP convention and debated Vice President Joe Biden on national television. "Nothing replaces experience," he says.
The media is a problem all its own. For reporters and commentators, the story is the president and his speech. The response? It's a waste of time, a needless interruption. I've been on TV panels where the attitude toward the responder is, "Do we really have to listen to this?" I've shared that sentiment.
Republicans especially have suffered. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's response last year was serious and well delivered. He took note of a line from Mr. Obama's address. The president "even criticized us for refusing to raise taxes to delay military cuts—cuts that were his idea in the first place," Mr. Rubio said. The press ignored his remarks and harped on his reaching for a bottle of water during his response. (Too bad Mr. Ryan didn't tip him off about cough drops.)
Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana fared even worse in 2009 when he spoke from the governor's mansion in Baton Rouge. It was a clunky speech, but the media treated it as a career-killer, and still does.
Both parties have tried just about anything to make their response fresh and appealing. Responding to President Nixon in 1970, Democrats produced a 45-minute televised program with four senators and three House members. Two years later, they presented a 53-minute response featuring phone calls from the public and responses from a panel of four senators and seven House members.
To respond to President Reagan, Democrats prerecorded programs in 1982 and 1983, each with a dozen members of Congress. In 1984, their response was part taped, part live. In 1985, Democrats turned to a televised discussion with voters and remarks by Democratic officials.
After these formats flopped with pundits and viewers alike, Democrats gave up. Now they rely on single responder or their Senate and House leaders together.
Republicans have abandoned the quest for a livelier and effective response too. But Frank Luntz, the influential GOP consultant, believes they shouldn't have. He recommends going outside Washington to stage future responses to the president's State of the Union address, presenting a contrast with Mr. Obama's speech in the lair of the political class on Capitol Hill.
Mr. Luntz's ideal is for three young Republican House members to gather in a diner in St. Louis, listen to citizens who have watched the State of the Union address, and respond spontaneously. After Mr. Obama's reading of a speech written by political advisers, Mr. Luntz says, the Republicans would appear as "representatives of the people with the people and listening to the people."
Don't expect to see this approach next year or the next. Mr. Luntz says he has offered his advice before, and GOP leaders have spurned it. "I've given up." Republicans are too risk-averse, he says, and they "don't think visually."
But efforts to spruce up the response to the State of the Union address will be unnecessary if the TV audience for the speech declines. In the Battleground Poll this month, less than a majority of voters (47%) said they're extremely or very likely to watch Tuesday's night's speech. And only 42% think it's an extremely or very important event.
One last thing. The idea that delivering the response is a potential steppingstone to the White House is pure myth. In 48 years, no solo responder has been elected president.
Mr. Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard, is a Fox News commentator
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