President Bush's 2007 State of the Union Address

As I was listening to President George Bush last night try to make his case for troop surge in Iraq and for certain domestic priorities, I returned in my mind to the fifth-sixth year of other Presidents of recent memory. It struck me that each one of them hit an immense wall sometime between the fifth and sixth year. Let's consider them in order (since the 1960s). Lyndon Johnson was so overwhelmed by the problems in Viet Namthat he decided not to pursue a another term--in 1968--after five years of being President. Five years into his Presidency, Richard Nixon was about to be impeached. Ronald Reagan ran into Iran Contra in the sixth year of his Presidency and Bill Clinton's dalliance with Monica Lewinsky finally caught up with him in the sixth year of his service. Thus, it seems as if low points plague Presidents about this time in their service. Maybe this indicates that we should just go for one-term Presidents and make the term of office six years but I, as a wordsmith, think that it provides a great opportunity for America to learn new words. We should all know nadir by now, for example. We might even try to "re-coin" a classic word to describe the President's performance--bathetic. Partaking both of pathetic and bathos (depth; lowest phase; bottom), bathetic poll numbers would mean those around 30-40 percent approval rating. Well, this is President Bush's bathetic time, and he gave a bathetic speech last night to confirm it.

The Structure of the Speech

The President is really becoming quite transparent in the ways he is trying to manipulate/shape his audience. In this speech he decided to try to play the "bi-partisan" card by first commending the speaker, then launch into a listing of social issues that most Democrats have been hoping to talk about for years, before making reference to his "new" Iraq initiative. The problem with the speech, however, is that is lacked all conviction. He was gracious enough in commending the Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, but his comments on domestic issues had no zing or passion, and most of them lacked any kind of specificity or engaging statement that would indicate that the President was interested in them. Indeed, he saved some of his most passionate words for "earmarks," not something that the American public has any knowledge of whatsoever. Are "earmarks" pork, for example? By throwing out numbers that made little sense to listeners (cutting earmarks by $18 billion), he gave the impression early on that he wasn't treading confidently in the realm of ideas or of numbers. Then, by mentioning he wanted to cut our consumption of oil by 20% in 10 years, when we knew he wasn't going to be around even two years, we also said, "Huh?" He had mentioned in each of his previous State of the Union Addresses that we need to cut our dependence on foreign oil and had done nothing to address the issue in the mean time. Why should we believe him now, especially since he seemed like he was just reading numbers off the teleprompter?

And then, his laundry list of domestic issues seemed to strike most of the wrong notes. He wanted to "reform" Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, but the last time he got near it, with a Republican-controlled Congress in 2005, the nation screamed for him to back off. How is he doing to do anything when the opposition now controls the Congress? Or, with respect to a tax deduction for health insurance, how does that deal with the issue at all of the affordability or availability of coverage for people? Most people who forego this type of coverage are averse to paying out the money up front; a deduction merely gives some of it back to them at the back end. Well, he tried to talk briefly, too, about immigration reform and reauthorization of "No Child Left Behind," but he sounded as if he was speaking these words into a wind tunnel, which whisked them away as soon as they were spoken.

And this was the "conciliatory" part of the speech. When he got to the buildup in Iraq, he tried to sound confident and "Presidential," but he had lost a lot of the fire of earlier years. While still talking about success, he had little of the sense that America's "mission" in the Middle East was going to become some kind of beacon of freedom to all around.

Analysis

I think two things happened in the President's speech to make is such a loser last night. The first was that he has not had the services of his major speech writer, Michael Gerson, for nearly two years, and that lack was evident. Gerson, a Wheaton College (IL) graduate and an evangelical Christian, was a master at crafting phrases that sounded biblical and Lincolnesque, with equal measures of compassion and resolve, with a sort of lilting style that touched the ears and the heart of listeners. But the adddress last night, though not ponderous, was not punctuated by what anyone could call eloquent or gripping rhetoric. It simply was a sort of tired trotting out of doctrinal principles that have gotten him into trouble in six years and some specific proposals that lacked any kind of oomph to them. Gone was a sense of history, that America was in a "defining moment," that this was a time for "a shining hour," that America's "mission to the world" was off-track or needed to be recalibrated, embraced, or even re-articulated. Gone was the passion and focus that normally goes with the sense of being "at war."

But we can't just blame things on the departure of a fine speechwriter. Ultimately, the President uses the words and says what he wants to say. I think what has happened is that the President, who has never really learned what it is to "govern" this country, has completely lost his way. He only had about six months to get "up to speed" in 2001 before 9/11 hit. From then on it was a crisis mentality in the nation and White House. The "War on Terrorism" took on almost epic proportions. But now, when we see the gray areas of that policy in stark terms, the President doesn't seem to know what next to do. Or, another way of saying it, he might not be that interested in doing much of anything. If he could gracefully resign from the Presidency today, I bet he would consider it more than once. The President, then, does not know how to "govern." He has surrounded himself with warrior-types (Cheney, Rumsfeld) or "yes-people" (Rice, Gonzalez) to such an extent that he is fully impaired now. He cannot get good advice because he has so long only sought certain types of advice, advice that is growing more hollow by the day.

Conclusion

Finally, I think we have a President who is only finally catching up to the fact that his Iraq policy is in disarray. I don't believe he fully engaged himself in the details of the War as it was unfolding; he let cute phrases (terrorism, insurgency, etc.) cover for analysis. And, if Walter Mondale is right, he let a Vice-President throw his ample weight around with government agencies to make sure that only ideologically-approved information would make it to the President. Now, when he realizes he should have been a diligent student all along, it is too late to catch up for "finals." And, the President is probably growing depressed about it. Oh, he may hide it. And he may send out Tony Snow to stress that the President is simply a "force of nature" who is so committed to his job that he bounds out of bed each day to get to the tasks at hand. But we as a people are now dealing with the results of living with a person who never really thought that study was important. We all, because of him, are failing the greatest exam of our time.

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