Opinion

O’s sound and fury

Based on President Obama’s State of My Campaign — er, State of the Union — Address last night, the answer to America’s problems are simple: bigger government, soaking the rich and ensuring equal opportunity for all.

He called for “fair play and people getting a fair shot” — which sounds great.

Alas, it’s just more stunts and rhetoric.

Indeed, the speech was an outright rewriting of history.

And a mess of contradictions.

After all, if Obama truly sought to boost economic opportunity in America, he’d muster the nerve to take on the nation’s teachers unions, which for too long have stood in the way of truly great schools — without which kids have little chance of a “fair shot” at good jobs and prosperity.

Last night, the unions got no mention.

His distortions of reality grew from there:

* To hear him describe it, for instance, the economy’s thriving. Gee, tell that to the nation’s 8.5 percent unemployed — 13 million Americans — who surely know better.

* “No bailout, no handouts and no cop-outs,” he vowed — just minutes after hailing the effectiveness of the auto industry bailout (which actually began under the Bush administration).

* “This country needs an all-out . . . energy strategy that’s . . . full of new jobs,” he said. Yet, in a fit of environmental extremism, he just rejected the Keystone pipeline from Canada that would employ thousands.

* He called for new government investment in energy start-ups, noting that “some technologies don’t pan out; some companies fail.”

True — but when they fail under Obama, like Solyndra, they do so with a half-billion dollars of taxpayer money.

* And he spoke of the “renewal of American leadership,” denying that he was pushing the nation into decline. (No mention of France’s leading role in the Libyan campaign, or Iranian or Russian chest-beating.)

Obama did address the critical subject of America’s schools. He called for rewarding good teachers and booting those “who just aren’t helping kids learn.” But his friends in the teachers unions — the ones blocking those reforms — got a pass.

At bottom, Obama was kicking off his re-election bid with populist themes meant to divert focus from his own failed record. Which is why his speech sounded like a page out of the Occupy Wall Street playbook — calling for an economy that “works for everyone, not just a wealthy few.”

He announced the creation of a unit of prosecutors that will take on Wall Street. To head it, he tapped New York’s own Eric Schneiderman — the second-most-political attorney general in recent state history, after the disgraced Eliot Spitzer.

Meanwhile, the president envisions yet more taxes on high-income Americans.

He’s resurrecting the so-called “Buffett Rule” — taxing capital gains at the same rate as wages, which he first suggested last year. (He even placed Warren Buffett’s secretary, whom he claims pays a higher tax rate than her billionaire boss, near the first lady last night.)

But his taxes will lead to more economic stagnation. As Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels said in the GOP response: “If we fail to shift to a pro-jobs, pro-growth economy,” one in which “government is meant to serve the people rather than supervise them . . . there will never be enough revenue to pay for our safety net [or] national security.”

Obama can try to run from his record.

He can look to divide the country and claim that “fairness” is his top priority.

But all the oratory in his playbook can’t alter the reality of a failed presidency.