I'm not so sure that Americans don't care enough about each other to support the community college proposal. I haven't really heard any opposition to it from any of my friends or acquaintances. In fact, it's actually quite difficult to argue against. The GOP-controlled Congress is going to have a pretty hard time building support for opposition to the proposal, although I'm sure they'll figure out some way to do it.

Comments sections on some sites have had the regular "way to waste money ..." types of comments but that's hardly indicative of the nation as a whole. The reason I believe it will run up against a lot of opposition is because every year when my town sends out the breakdown of how taxes were spent I can't count the number of people I hear whining about school taxes already. "I don't have any kids in school so why the hell should I have to pay for it!?" is a VERY common theme in my area. Maybe it's not as common everywhere, this is a big diverse place after all, but it's common enough that some places have started to implement charter schools as a response to it.

The best argument I've heard, that I agree with in a way, is that we should first focus on fixing our broken pre-college school system. I don't see why we couldn't do both at the same time but if we're forced to pick one or the other I'd agree that that is probably of greater importance. Though that's a separate debate :)

Yeah, I don't see why you folks couldn't fix both the school and the college system at the same time. You should be free to fix your problems in any order you want.

Just remember that I don't have kids in school nor in college, and taking my money to pay for more unfireable teachers is not "fixing".

You're entirely right, it is the entire point of his proposals.

Why else would he be floating proposals he knows can never pass, except to be winning cheap gains from the suckers who don't see it for what it is? A president proposing a huge program like free college for everyone without controlling Congress is basically talking to a wall.

Obama is trying to help the Democratic party with its stagnant voter base problem. The people who would regularly vote Democrat have moved far to the left of the Democratic mainline and are tired of seeing nothing come out of the Democratic party, meaning that they no longer have any motivation to vote for Democrats-- not to say they are voting for Republicans either.

Sure, you're going to say Obamacare came out of the Democracts-- but the left leaning segment of the Democratic base didn't want Obamacare, they wanted single payer, and Obamacare fell horrendously short of that. This election was a wakeup call for the Democrats, and indicated to them that they have lost their base to the more radical members of their party like Elizabeth Warren.

Thus, we see the Democrats attempt to show people that they still have big ideas, because they are incapable of showing people that they have big actions.

I've become extremely disillusioned with US Politics and I find it hard to not be apathetic about it no matter how much I don't want to be. It seems like everyone treats it as a big game. Just look at the landscape and how its implemented. Talking heads providing endless commentary, the entire country being broken into teams, people taking sides and playing favorites, presidential elections have more in common with American Idol than with actual political elections, politicians being more concerned with being the "winner", or at least not being the "loser", than doing what's right (even when "right" is defined by their own beliefs). I'm sure its always been like this in some way but it feels like it just gets worse every election cycle.

The truth is probably somewhere in between. Obama can't be maneuvering for re-election, of course, but can try to set things up for the 2016 elections.

But good legislation does not just magically appear in Congress. Many government programs got a big boost from the President "calling for them"--national parks, for example, or the moon landings. These were not new ideas when Roosevelt or Kennedy spoke about them, but speaking about them helped generate the public momentum for Congress to act.

The U.S. was the first nation in the world to provide free, publicly funded education through high school. It was implemented locally, but it was an idea that was discussed and promoted nationally. The idea of free education is a powerful one in the U.S. culture.

And many community colleges are already heavily funded by state and local governments; making them totally free might not be as big a step as it seems on paper.

One can argue that the problem is that we've cared too much, not that we don't care at all. The biggest argument I've heard against it from various sources is just "Where's the money going to come from?" Individually everything the government is doing could be fantastic and wonderful, yet the whole can still end up being a bad idea when the whole turns out to be unaffordable. Of course it's wonderful if we don't have to consider costs, but we do.

I could also argue that if 4 year colleges have even in part become so expensive because of all the subsidized money available that bringing subsidized money to the community college will have an "unexpected result" so expected that one could hardly call it "unexpected" anymore.