State of the Union

President Bush’s performance last night in the State of the Union Address was very formidable. He has definitely grown in office and no longer looks like a man dependent on his underlings. The giants of the first administration, such as Cheney and Rumsfeld, looked oddly smaller and older while the power and vigor of the president shone through.

Thus Bush began his quest for support for his two major issues – the Iraq War and Social Security Reform – with a leg up in the public mind, if not in the Congress. The speech brilliantly written and almost flawlessly delivered was deficient on those two issues to the point of obfuscation.

That Iraqis voted in large number last Sunday was a triumph of the human spirit. It doesn’t mean that democracy can be permanently imposed on that country at the point of an American gun. We’re going to have to go home someday. Nor does it hide the fact that our new rationale for the attack – extension of freedom around the world – is a giant leap away from traditional views of the American presidency and the Constitution itself. That the Bush Doctrine on display in the Inaugural Address which had to be interpreted by so many, including George H.W. Bush, as not nearly so bellicose as it was believed by those who heard it, was in my judgment an ex post facto rationale for the war itself.

With regard to Social Security reform, the president left the Republican majority with the unenviable task of writing the legislation and of explaining it to the voters. Mr. Bush recited many of the proposals that leading commentators have made but didn’t say he favored any of them. The Republicans are going to have to write the legislation and suffer the slings and arrows of the Democrats along the way – or were those catcalls I heard from the Democrat side really cheers?

10.0 for delivery and 2.0 for content does not sound like a guaranteed winner to me. The president failed to adequately address the fiscal problems of Medicare and Medicaid, far more important drains on our treasury than Social Security. I guess what I’m saying is that the president’s performance was a tour de force of style over substance. A gentleman’s C just won’t do for issues of this magnitude.

Blog on!

Wild Bill