President Obama’s State of the Union: Hey, America, fixing our economy is just a big athletic contest!

Well, yes, I sat up and listened to President Obama’s first State of the Union address. Overall, I felt mildly dismayed, but not surprised, by how the president’s audience cheered on the several occasions when he mouthed the usual clichés to arouse America’s competitive spirit in relationship to the rest of the world, for example:

From -- from the first railroads to the Interstate Highway System, our nation has always been built to compete. There's no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains or the new factories that manufacture clean-energy products.

It was kind of like listening to a basketball coach rev up his team before the big game with all the loyal fans present. As was to be expected, the fans stood up and cheered on cue.

Sadly, I did not hear an alternative vision of how America could play a leadership role in promoting a level of global prosperity that would at least allow the people of every nation the opportunity to provide food, clothing, and shelter for their families. But then that would require an emphasis on cooperation rather than heightened competition.

I had to shake my head when President Obama offered a disclaimer for Candidate Obama who was swept to victory on his repeated pledges to transform the world in six days and rest on the seventh. Instead of “Yes, we can,” the president spoke more humbly a year after he took office:

I campaigned on the promise of change, change we can believe in, the slogan went. And right now, I know there are many Americans who aren't sure if they still believe we can change, or that I can deliver it.

But remember this: I never suggested that change would be easy or that I could do it alone. Democracy in a nation of 300 million people can be noisy and messy and complicated. And when you try to do big things and make big changes, it stirs passions and controversy. That's just how it is.

I beg to differ: Candidate Obama may never have suggested that change would be easy, but nowhere in his heated rhetoric did this superb motivational speaker warn his typically youthful, shouting, and foot-stomping followers of the hard road ahead.

And he’s still not being 100 percent honest and straightforward with the American people by implying that overcoming the financial meltdown and high levels of unemployment is comparable to a rigorous pick-up basketball game in which the USA team in its red, white, and blue uniforms can easily overcome its international competition.