Waiting for leadership

These headlines today lay bare everything that was wrong with President Obama's SOTU address last night: "Federal deficit to hit $1.5 trillion in 2011" and "Medicare official doubts health care law savings."

There's a sizable chunk of the American populace (including me and my buddy Paul Ryan) who genuinely believe this country is heading towards a Greece-style debt meltdown. It was the animating force behind the Tea Party and the last election. Yet Obama gets in front of the country and starts talking about choo-choo trains and solar panels.

Here's some more commentary along the same lines:

Washington Post editorial: "A disappointing State of the Union address."

Peter Wehner on Contentions: "An irresponsible performance." "Obama spoke as if he were living in an alternate universe - one where a $14 trillion debt and a trillion dollar a year deficit don't exist."

Here's Matt Welch with "We don't do big things."...the only real policy issue in America right now is that we are on the verge of a fiscal catastrophe because we cannot afford the government we are paying for today, let alone the one we're promising for tomorrow."

Then there's Megan McArdle: "Our President spent over 5,000 words last night kind of noting, offhand, that we might have a problem, and then studiously avoiding proposing any serious solutions to the problem."