So, I read Barack Obama’s State of the Union address for two reasons. First, because social media couldn’t say enough about it as voyeurs the world over rejoiced in watching an American President diss his opposition party. It’s online, a fun way to spend 30 minutes of the day.

The second reason was to see if it lived up to all the excited swooning it caused in social progressives. Like mine own President of the United Republic of Tanzania, Obama is on his way out.

Conventional wisdom dictates that in such a circumstance, a brave man should throw caution to the wind and pursue boundary-breaking policies. Unleash the inner “I have a dream” moment, if you will.

I am not a fan of an exceedingly strong presidency. Much more interested in checks, balances and institutions that work dispassionately and compassionately for the benefit of the citizenry.

This is my primary beef with the Big Man philosophy of our African polities: Investing too much in an individual will invariably undermine the collective good. Ours is not a bright future if we insist on continuing to abase ourselves in front of human idols.

That said, presidents have some beneficial use above and beyond those executive powers of theirs. There’s the selling of visions with the capacity to inspire the polity to action, a subtle and crucial craft. The big speeches is where this kind of work is done.

Obama’s speech was an American president’s speech- and a 21st century one at that. Full of oversimplification, bombast and questionable pro-nouncements on America’s idea of its place in the global community.

On the other hand, talk about being a social progressive’s sweet little fantasy when it came to internal policy. With nothing left to lose, Obama bared his lefty soul and said he’d fight tooth and nail for what he sees as the benefit of his country.

It got me thinking about Jay Kay. Of course, it is supposedly too early to muse on the lyrics of his swan song. With less than a year to the General Election, this isn’t a fantasy that should be indulged.

Part of the answer about Jay Kay’s last try lies in the proposed constitution. Of course it reeks of “legacy project,” so what? I am a big believer in ridiculously ambitious plans for success, because idealism doesn’t work without them. We the people have so far gamely participated because we do need a new constitution and hope is the spoonful of sugar that makes the democracy go down.

It will be easy enough to bully Tanzanians into passing this neo-constitution via referendum because the majority of us still live in the country where there’s crap literacy, no chance of being visited by a neutral information source on the proposed constitution, no budget to do so anyways, and every penalty in the world for not kissing the feet of the green and gold.

Unfortunately, many of us are going to insist on not being herded through this process willy-nilly. The problem lies almost entirely with the plausibility of the plan, and more significantly, the timing. Leaving roughly three years to overhaul a constitution was gamble enough.

The first stanza of the swan song that might have thrilled us all and worked to redress matters was Jay Kay’s address to the elders of Dar es Salaam on some December afternoon last year. And yet it was a speech full of prevarication that did not satisfy, not by a long shot. Why?

The truth is that there is nothing to obligate Jay Kay to address the nation. Tanganyika’s most recent Independence celebration, which is the closest thing we have to a mandatory presidential address, passed quietly. Somewhere along the line, we lost the tradition of Tanzanian statesman oratory.

Is this the price we’re paying for having forfeited presidential candidate debates 10 years ago, among other parts of the leadership’s communications infrastructure?

I read Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address for three reasons, actually. The third being that I am killing time, waiting for something good to read much closer to home.

Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report, http://mikochenireport.blogspot.com. E-mail: [email protected]