Disaster Nationalism

Apparently, last night's tedious, cliché-ridden slog of a State of the Union Address was "Obama's best speech as president." Or so says John Judis, who argues that the president scapegoated foreigners ("provided a new villain") to scare Americans ("National security was the subtext of Obama's appeal") into giving the government more power ("Americans have only approved the expansion of government when they saw their security as a nation threatened"). For Judis, this is a good thing. But I think he's inadvertently made the case that we've just witnessed the president at his worst.