Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday said he was bracing himself for President Obama’s last State of the Union speech, one that seems likely to be just another campaign speech from a president who never learned how to govern.
“Americans assumed the campaigning would eventually come to a close, and the serious work of governing would eventually commence,” he said on the Senate floor. “It’s now many years later, and the Obama … campaign never really ended.”
“Speeches still substitute for substance, straw men still stand in for serious debate, slogans are still a surrogate for governing,” he said. “We’ve been promised even more campaigning tonight, this time for the candidate President Obama would like to see succeed him.”
“It leaves Americans to wonder: when does the serious work of governing ever going to begin?” McConnell asked.
Obama is expected to outline the progress his administration has made over its last seven years, but then outline where he wants the country to go next.
Obama has already made it clear he wants a Democrat to succeed him, but Democrats have rejected GOP complaints that Obama has waged a permanent political campaign while in office.
Just after McConnell spoke, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said McConnell’s remarks show he “lives in a world that doesn’t exist.”
