The State of the Union
by Jim Di Liberto

Despite two years in the Oval Office, George W. Bush still comes off as a second-tier high school debater. He goes to the podium with a photocopied speech he snagged from the top guy on the team. Having cut down some of the polysyllabic words and added a bit of down-home color, he passes off the arguments as his own. It isn't difficult to do this because, after all, he agrees with the guy who put it together — they're teammates.

It's not like Bush is the first president to rattle off someone else's words while standing in the well of the Capitol — speechwriters are as old as the two-party system. It's just that Bush still seems to be reading a borrowed script rather than being an instrumental figure in its creation. The president has always said that a key to understanding his administration is knowing that he is surrounded by intelligent people. But, at a time war in Iraq seems inevitable, can we rely on the expertise of the martinets behind the marionette? Last night's speech was, in this sense, more of the same: While Bush came into his own as the address morphed from a boilerplate enunciation of a Republican domestic agenda to a stern argument for intervention in Iraq, it was nevertheless clear that he and his hawkish advisors were on the same page.

Unfortunately, it seems that Bush and Co. are still in the opening chapter; as he detailed Saddam Hussein's legacy of torture, cruelty and oppression as president of Iraq, the Capitol sat silent. But after finishing his indictment of the Iraqi dictator, Bush forgot to answer the one question an American public weary of war wants to know the answer to: why now? Saddam Hussein is a very bad man — there is no denying it. He has gassed his own people, has deceived UN inspectors for years and lusts for the dirtiest weapons available to the fashionable dictator. This is nothing new — and telling America about it isn't going to win over many converts. Bush failed to take this opportunity to explain how Hussein is more of a threat now than he was five or six years ago, when Saddam first started jerking the UN around. He did not tell us how Hussein is more of a threat now. Where are the terrorist connections? Where is the threat that did not exist before? As a result, Bush took half an hour to say that Hussein — as well as North Korea and Iran — isn't very nice.

Indeed, such political sleight-of-hand is de rigueur in these annual reports to Congress. Though few have mastered the art as well as Bill Clinton, Bush slalomed through his speech with impressive skill, even if the content was at times left wanting. In an address where war in the Middle East and reshaping American energy policy were touchstones, he managed never to say the word "oil," instead promising alleviate our reliance on "foreign sources of energy" — and it's doubtful he is referring to the sun.

Indeed, Bush's domestic agenda was rife with such word games. He promised to slash federal spending, but he promised funds for admirable (and not typically Republican) causes — $1.2 billion for clean energy, $400 billion for Medicare and $15 billion for fighting AIDS in Africa. His decision to eliminate the tax on dividends (a mistake) and the "marriage penalty" (a smarter idea) were couched in appeals for more "fair" taxation — though fairness has never been a staple in an elaborate tax code that goes out of its way to create loopholes and special conditions for special persons and organizations. Giving Wall Street its dividend taxes back or tossing a couple hundred bucks back to American families are hardly significant steps in kick-starting the economy or creating more jobs.

Still, despite the sales pitches for war and tax cuts, there is promise in the agenda Bush laid out last night. His vision of making medical coverage available for all Americans is noble and attractive, though how to build such a health care system while simultaneously not creating a massive bureaucracy and keeping health decisions in the hands of doctors and not HMOs remains questionable. And the confusion extends beyond healthcare: For all the visions of hydrogen-powered cars, Bush's proposal would do little to address the pollution and fuel-consumption problems that accompany the growing number of SUVs on America's highways (and it seems unlikely that any politician from either side of the aisle would push increased efficiency standards so long as Michigan is in play in 2004).

Bush declared, early in his speech, that "our resolve is firm and our union is strong." This was a generous assessment of the state of America; the public is rejuvenated in its patriotism, but unsure on why Iraq has leapfrogged Al Qaeda on the list of international priorities. Our union is strong in the sense that our economy is stagnant but not in freefall, and in the sense that our influence on the international stage is significant. Protest as Germany and France may, it is doubtful they will be so vocal when push comes to shove.

Bush's agenda, both domestic and foreign, is ambitious — far more ambitious than many presidents have attempted when suffering from declining approval ratings, and for this he should be commended. After all, the Democrats have been trying to form some kind of agenda for three years now, yet they have been woefully unsuccessful in crafting any kind of vision for America. In his State of the Union address, Bush has laid out an agenda that looks beyond simple legislation and policy — the president clearly has his eye on establishing a new Republican majority in America. Bush's address, while often sounding cribbed from his kitcen cabinet's notes, masked potentially unpopular measures in compassionate language and co-opted traditionally Democratic issues by offering GOP alternatives, and so is a big step forward in achieving his goal.

— James Di Liberto (diliberj@georgetown.edu)