Bush shines with State of the Union Address
Mike Marchand
Undistinguished Alumnus
As President George W. Bush's words of plainspoken eloquence echoed through the chamber of the U.S. House on Jan. 29, it seemed that even history itself was pausing to observe and document the moment.
This was the speech of George W. Bush's life. While in terms of sheer numbers, more people watched his address nine days after the devastating attacks on our country, it would be at this point in history where George W. Bush would be judged.
With his Democratic opposition aligning its forces to take back the House, expand their majority in the Senate and even prepare for the 2004 presidential election, Bush brought down the House. Rather than offer a banal "laundry list" of domestic programs, Bush announced bold, visionary changes for both the immediate and the long-term future of the Union.
First, Bush announced that he would make the war on terrorism the first priority, both fighting it overseas and defending against it stateside. Although fighting the terrorists has been Issue One for Bush since Sept. 11, what surprised many was the lack of equal time domestic issues received. All told, they were less than one-fifth of the President's speech, and they were mentioned only in bullet-point style: Improve education. End our dependence on foreign energy sources. Expand trade. Accelerate and finalize tax cuts. Reform welfare, health care and Social Security. And then it was back to how we should fight the terrorists.
For the most part, Bush's domestic proposals didn't need details, because on some things, like trade, energy and taxes, he has plans that have already passed the House, which is in Republican hands, but are languishing at the bottom of the Democrat-controlled Senate's to-do list. But even then, meticulous details are just not the President's style. He's more a rapid-fire Texas gunslinger than a poet, linguistically speaking.
The second and even more intrepid statement Bush made was that he would no longer wait for the next terrorist attack before launching a military offensive. Bush defined Iraq, Iran, North Korea and other nations like them as an "axis of evil," a phrase that harkens back to the enemies of the 20th Century: the Nazi-fascist-imperialist axis of the Second World War and the "evil empire" of the Cold War. In both of those occasions, the forces of freedom tried for years to merely contain or isolate our foes, rather than destroy them. No longer. America will now work to annihilate the enemies of the 21st Century —before they can do it to us.
With those bold pronouncements, Bush may very well have built on his unprecedented high approval ratings. An astonishing 94 percent of viewers said that their response was positive; 74 percent said very positive. On Bush's antiterrorism proposals, 97 percent approved, and on his economic plans, 88 percent approved. When last year the story was of an America divided into red states and blue states, the turnaround and the unity behind George W. Bush has been nothing short of extraordinary.
So although Bush went out on a couple of limbs, he appears to have a massive groundswell of public support. This bodes very ill for his Democratic opposition. In order to win, they have to hammer away on the domestic issues. This has the odd effect of making it so that the Democrats have to pretend like Sept. 11 didn't happen, because once that or the war is brought up, voters will rally around the President.
The Democratic National Committee's home page asks volunteers to "Help the Democratic Party put America's priorities first: getting our fiscal house in order, adding a prescription drug benefit for Medicare, enacting a real patients' bill of rights and other initiatives to help America's hardworking families." Sept. 11? Not on this list.
All of the potential domestic problems are being blamed on Bush. The recession: Bush's fault. The budget deficit: Bush's fault. The fact that, oh yeah, the biggest catastrophe in American history happened, and we have to spend billions to clean up, defend another one, and bring the "evildoers" to justice doesn't seem to enter their minds.
Last year, the Conventional Wisdom on George W. Bush was that he was an intellectual lightweight who couldn't even garner a majority vote. But since Sept. 11, he's been riding high. He hasn't changed any: he still governs from the center as much as possible, he's still a straight talker and he still believes the things he believes in passionately. The events of the world have made us change how we view him. He's done what all great leaders do: lead. Talk about "changing the tone." The Conventional Wisdom has proven to be neither conventional nor wise.
For the most part, America is in union with George W. Bush. And the state of that union has never been stronger.
Mike Marchand, class of 2001, is an analyst for RealClearPolitics and a contributor to The Politix Group. He's more than willing to go into quadruple-overtime with his Valentine. Eh, he's lying there: he doesn't have a Valentine. If you'd like to be, e-mail him at Marchand.3@nd.edu. "Undistinguished Alumnus" appears every other Monday.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Monday, February 11, 2002
