Peter Hoskin

Obama delivers his pitch for a second term

A Romney-seeking missile. That was what much of Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address amounted to last night. He didn’t mention the Republican presidential challenger by name, of course. That would have been too obvious. But he did dwell on those sorts of issues around taxation and jobs — including his ‘Buffett Rule’, by which, we learn, millionaires should pay at least a 30 per cent tax rate — that have been causing Romney trouble. To underline the point that ‘a billionaire [should] pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes’, Warren Buffett’s secretary was even among the Obamas’ guests for the evening.

Obama’s ploy, when presenting all this, was to be upfront about his own privilege. And so we heard a great deal about how ‘we need to change our tax code so that people like me… pay our fair share of taxes.’

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