re: state of the union/usa today's take
Here's USA Today's take on the speech. Surprisingly low key...
We-can-have-it-all tone unseemly as war looms WASHINGTON — The president's words were well crafted. The president's delivery was stirring, a tribute to the long hours of Teleprompter practice. And yet there was something oddly disjointed about George W. Bush's second State of the Union Address. Maybe it was simply that even the most adroit team of speechwriters cannot craft a here's-what-I'm-going-to-do-for-you address pumping for a domestic agenda at a time when the war drums are sounding their staccato rhythms.
Those in Saddam Hussein's entourage who watched the spectacle on satellite television in Baghdad must have been puzzled not to hear the word Iraq once during the first 40 minutes of Bush's speech. Surely, they wondered why the "Healthy Forests Initiative" got higher billing than the world's premier rogue state. But any last-ditch Iraqi hopes for a reprieve were dashed when Bush dramatically announced that he would ask for a special Feb. 5 Security Council session "to consider the facts of Iraq's ongoing defiance of the world."
Nothing in the president's words guaranteed that bombs would soon drop on Baghdad. Bush carefully avoided uttering the magic phrase "material breach," the language in the Security Council resolution that the president believes would justify an American-led attack. But listening to the president, it also was increasingly difficult to concoct a scenario under which war could be avoided. As Bush put it, "We will consult, but let there be no misunderstanding: If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm we will lead a coalition to disarm him."
The president did not avoid the other charter members of the "axis of evil" the way he skirted the continued existence of Osama bin Laden. Still, there was a seeming confusion in the way that Bush discussed North Korea and Iran. It was realistic for the president to say, "Different threats require different strategies." But Bush offered no strategy for constraining Iran's drive for weapons of mass destruction beyond vaguely promising that "the United States supports their aspiration to live in freedom." As for North Korea, Bush first blustered, "The world will not be blackmailed." Then a few sentences later he offered this carrot: "The North Korean regime will find respect in the world, and revival for its people, only when it turns away from its nuclear ambitions."
Bush's moralistic approach to foreign policy showed its kinder, gentler side as the president talked with evident passion about the scourge of AIDS in Africa. The president lamented the way that AIDS victims are being told by their impoverished doctors, "We can't help you. Go home and die." Then Bush displayed wallet to go with his will by declaring, "I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years, including nearly $10 billion in new money, to turn the tide against AIDS." In the lexicon of Washington, the phrase "new money" translates into "this time I'm serious."
With the nation on the brink of war with Iraq, Bush might have used this annual address to Congress to make a final ironclad case to the American people justifying military action. Instead, the president put off that rhetorical reckoning until next week's proposed Security Council session or later. Reflecting the calculus that voters are more concerned about the economy than intransigent Iraqis, the president chose to emphasize his we-can-have-it-all domestic agenda.
That choice may have been shrewd politics, but it also helped drain the suspense from the State of the Union because Bush's tax-cut plan was already old news. The president didn't lack for ambition Tuesday night, coupling his deficit-defying tax cut with a plan to spend $400 billion to add a prescription-drug benefit to Medicare under the guise of something akin to a new HMO program. Few Americans are so conversant with the mind-numbing economics of health care that they could immediately calculate the costs and benefits of the president's still vague-around-the-edges proposal. But for the moment, the details could be left to policy wonks. What mattered politically was that the president seemed eager to occupy traditional Democratic turf, trying to demonstrate that even the threat of war would not still his determination to offer a new government benefit to the elderly.
Americans do not watch the State of the Union while balancing pie charts of the federal budget on their laps. Listening to the cadences of the president's rhetoric, it is nearly impossible to make the aural distinction between millions and billions, let alone putting these numbers in the context of the overall budget. That is why presidents (Clinton was a master at this) have grown adept at lavishing attention on popular-sounding programs, while glossing over the reality that their cost could be picked up with Bill Gates' pocket change. Who can be opposed to the president's new initiative to provide mentors to 1 million disadvantaged junior-high-school students? But to hear Bush talk Tuesday, you would have thought this $450 million proposal was roughly the size of the Agriculture Department.
A month or so from now, when Bush reaches his seemingly inevitable final reckoning with Saddam, it is safe to predict that Tuesday night's speech will seem like a hazy memory. The president may believe that modern warfare requires no sacrifice on the home front. But there is something inherently insensitive in dwelling on tax cuts and prescription-drug benefits as American soldiers are getting ready to march to war.
Walter Shapiro's column appears Wednesdays and Fridays. E-mail him at [email protected]
