Stacey Abrams took on the thankless task of providing the opposition party’s response to Tuesday’s State of the Union address.  Each year, the party that does not hold the White House selects a promising younger figure to answer the President’s speech.  In most cases, he or she promptly flops in front of a national audience.  It’s hard to impress TV viewers who have been bedazzled by the pomp of a presidential address from the podium of the House of Representatives, punctuated by ovations to those seated in the gallery, which is filled on this occasion with people who have survived the most daunting personal challenges.  As those in the gallery are pulled to the national bosom, the President who highlights them hopes to draw some of the resulting warmth to himself.  It seems to work.

Bobby Jindal and Marco Rubio have each swung and missed when their party offered them an at-bat after a State of the Union address from President Obama.  In contrast, I thought Stacey Abrams did a creditable job.  She was eloquent, forceful, articulate, and poised.  It’s only when I look at the content of her remarks that I take issue.

Ms. Abrams began her speech by telling us about her family.  I was not surprised to learn that both of her parents were hard-working.  I have not heard a politician speak of parents who were not hard-working.  I am waiting for an elected official to tell us “My parents maintained a good work-life balance.  They took care of our family but they used time off whenever possible and didn’t work any harder than they had to.”

It’s a high-risk approach.  If you are thinking of going into politics and your parents were not especially hard-working, I recommend that you find a different line of work.

Ms. Abrams’ father was generous as well as hard-working.  She told how the family went out looking for her father one rainy night (this was in Georgia, by the way) to find him walking without his coat, soaked to the skin.  He had given his coat to a homeless man.  The incident drove home to young Stacey the message that no one gets by without help from other people.

True enough.  We all have an obligation to help others.  What I object to is the conversion of that moral obligation that we each impose on ourselves into a legal obligation to be imposed on us by other people.  Father Abrams helped that homeless man of his own free will.  I fear that his daughter intends to extract coats by force from the rest of us.  If you don’t give up your coat, those whose impulses are more charitable than yours can jail you, fine you, and seize your assets, at their option.  To be accurate, you don’t have to give up a coat, just the money to buy it plus an overhead charge for those who will keep the books, write the memos, and audit the complex process that results from the commandeered transfer.

I have the highest regard for the father who gave up his coat.  I have respect for the energy and passion of his daughter who wants to see her father’s example multiplied.  I only wish she would use the power of his example to preach her message in church and forego the temptation to use the power of the state to accomplish purposes for which it is not suited.