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Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
President Bush did his best to scare the bejesus out of his audience Tuesday to make his case for war. And afterward, he was probably the only person to get a good night's sleep.
Jan 29, 2003 | The speech was two-thirds finished and President Bush had yet to even say the word "Iraq."
Finally, 47 minutes into it, Bush began laying out the argument that the electorate and the rest of the world had been waiting for -- why he seems to be about to send Americans' parents, children, spouses, siblings and friends into harm's way to unseat Saddam Hussein.
He laid out some justification for such a war, with the righteous determination that the U.S. would go it alone if need be -- "free people will set the course of history" -- and the attempt at reassuring words that "we are winning" the war on terrorism and "we will prevail" in Iraq. There was notably less talk of Saddam Hussein's nuclear threat than in the past -- but still plenty to scare the bejesus out of most Americans. Toward the end of the speech, Bush even gave the day when the countdown would begin: On Feb. 5, Bush said, the U.S. will officially pressure the United Nations Security Council "to consider the facts of Iraq's ongoing defiance of the world."
But before this point, the speech, Bush's second State of the Union address, had been an odd and not entirely successful one. The self-regarded compassionate conservative hopped back and forth from proposing hydrogen cars to banning so-called partial birth abortions, from trying to end AIDS in Africa to slamming trial lawyers. It was less a negotiation down the middle of the road than a hopscotch from bleeding-heart liberal to bedrock conservative.
Bush delivered almost two different speeches -- one incoherent, tax-cut-and-spend domestic laundry list glued to a firm, strong assertion of foreign policy that made it clear that the U.S. is indeed about to go to war.
Despite delivering the speech's staple ("Our union is strong") hapless Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., actually might have got it right the day before when he proclaimed, "The state of our union today is anxious." A USA Today-CNN-Gallup poll indicated that only 49 percent of those polled agree that Bush White House policies "will move the country in the right direction," down precipitously from 73 percent a year ago. Back then, 19 percent said Bush's policies were taking the country in the wrong direction; that number is 43 percent today.
With shaken investor confidence and 6 percent unemployment, it remains unclear that Bush's $674 billion tax cut proposal and plans to attack Iraq are what the nation is looking for. Bush needed to step up tonight and reassure everyone that he knew what he was doing. It's unclear that he accomplished that.
But thankfully for Bush, his opponents -- theoretically, at least -- come from the Democratic Party, an organization maybe best captured late in the speech when a camera caught Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., who at least appeared to be in deep slumber, while his son, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., wiped his nose with his hand.
After the speech, Kennedy the Elder called for a do-over, demanding a new vote authorizing the use of force in Iraq since "the world has changed."
With the possible exception of the Washington Generals, is there any group less inspiring than the Democrats? Has Rove slipped saltpeter into their Yoohoos? I'm not just talking about the fact that Daschle let the brigands at the Wall Street Journal and Family Research Council outlap him on outrage at Trent Lott's longing for Dixie. More specifically, who was the Einstein who brainstormed Washington Gov. Gary Locke as the designated Democratic rebutter? Locke -- chosen at least in part because he's chairman of the Democratic Governor's Association -- currently has 30 percent approval ratings in his own state. The only thing he said in his astoundingly unimpressive response that I can even recall -- and I'm writing this two seconds after he finished -- is the same sad refrain beginning "Make no mistake: Saddam Hussein is a ruthless tyrant, BUT ..." Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
