Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2004 | 9:04 a.m.
State of the Union addresses are steeped in politics, especially in years when the president is running for re-election. These speeches in election years usually aren't remembered long after they're delivered, but presidents hope that the remarks can at least help frame the year's political agenda, serving as an unofficial kickoff to the campaign. On Tuesday it was President Bush's turn as he delivered his State of the Union address before Congress and a national television audience.
Last year the president devoted a sizable portion of his State of the Union address to making the case for the war against Iraq, and this year he defended his war policies, an area where the public generally gives him high marks. No weapons of mass destruction have been found yet -- despite Bush's claim in last year's speech that Iraq had them -- but the president said Tuesday the war still has been a success. He noted that coalition forces are on the offensive, battling the insurgency that's loyal to former dictator Saddam Hussein. "We are dealing with these thugs in Iraq, just as surely as we dealt with Saddam Hussein's regime," Bush said. Toppling Saddam's regime certainly was a just war -- millions of Iraqis finally are free from his oppression. But it also has to be said that the administration made a serious miscalculation before the war when it opti mistically predicted that Iraqis would universally greet our troops as liberators.
Domestically, Bush on Tuesday touched only briefly on the economy, an area that many analysts believe is his Achilles' heel. Bush said the economy is growing and that he wants to keep the recovery going by having Congress make permanent the temporary tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003. And because the economy is rapidly changing and requires more skills, the president said, he wants new job-training grants to be available for use at community colleges. Of course, the irony of Bush touting such a job-training program is that 2.3 million jobs have been lost since he took office.
To get a true insight into what to expect from the president during the coming year, it's important to look at more than just the words spoken during a State of the Union address -- the president's past policies have to be factored in also. Bush's domestic agenda in particular is often incoherent and contradictory. On the one hand, a convincing argument could be made that Bush is one of the most conservative presidents in the past century. He has rolled back environmental protections supported by many Republicans, has cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans, supports the limited privatization of Social Security and Medicare and, when given a choice, tends to side with corporate interests over those of workers.
Yet this also is the same president who has presided over a huge expansion of the federal government. In President Bill Clinton's last year in office, federal expenditures totaled $1.86 trillion. Just three years later, on Bush's watch, federal expenditures have increased nearly 24 percent, to $2.31 trillion. Instead of responsibly proposing cuts in government spending to offset the big tax cuts he persuaded Congress to enact, he has chosen to let future generations pick up the tab. Bush hasn't put an end to corporate welfare, either, advocating huge government subsidies for insurance companies -- to pay for his prescription drug plan for seniors -- and for the oil, gas, coal and nuclear power industries, which would benefit handsomely under his energy plan.
Bush does have healthy job-approval ratings in some polls, much of it due to his handling of the war on terrorism. At the same time the support for Bush's overall policies doesn't run deep. Right now the electorate is evenly divided in its preference for a Republican or a Democrat in the White House, much as it was in 2000. In a few months' time, if not within a few weeks, Democrats will have settled on a presidential nominee. We're not sure if our hearts can take another photo-finish like what happened in 2000, but we sure could use a vigorous, yet clean, election that focuses on issues that matter to everyday Americans, offering a real, substantive choice between the Republican and Democratic nominees.
archive
