President Bush's State of the Union: Some Immediate Reactions

How did President Bush do last night?

An instant reaction poll of speech watchers last night by CNN/USA Today/Gallup found President George W. Bush received high marks for his State of the Union address, although considerably lower than last year. The speech appears to have persuaded many viewers about the need for an invasion of Iraq, but viewers seem dubious about the impact of Bush's economic program. When asked which issue was more important to them in the president's speech, respondents chose terrorism and Iraq over the economy by a 56% to 31% margin.

According to the Washington Post, "Although not all the issues were new, the speech's emphasis on conservative social causes represented a departure from Bush's first State of the Union address a year ago. Back then, he did not mention his desire to ban all forms of cloning -- including for biomedical research -- or his opposition to a procedure that critics call "partial birth" abortion. Along with a new $450 million initiative that would provide mentors to disadvantaged junior high school students and the children of prisoners, Bush called those policies part of "a culture that values every life."

The New York Times editorial staff was less than impressed by the State of the Union address: "At a moment when Americans were hungry for reassurance that the monomaniacal focus on Iraq makes sense when the economy is sputtering, Mr. Bush offered a rousing closing argument for war, but no convincing bill of particulars."

From Newsday: "But the bar he has to hurdle is appropriately high. This nation does not want to go to war unless it has no choice. Bush made the case last night that Hussein is an evil man who has done evil things and has accumulated weapons of mass destruction. The question is still: Why does that war have to be fought now? Why can't Hussein be disarmed through inspections? Why can't he be deterred as other evil actors have been in the past?"

Here is a clip from Canada's Globe and Mail regarding the war with Iraq: "Yes, but there remains reason to be wary. A war of the magnitude that the President now contemplates has to be approached with great care. And he should bring international opinion along with him."

An editorial in the International Herald Tribune urged Europeans to seek support from the American people to slowdown the Bush Administration's push for an Iraqi war: "If the Europeans hope to be able to limit America’s ability to act unilaterally without concern for the world’s good opinion, they will need allies in America itself. The obvious choice would be the American people, since, as survey after survey over a period of decades has demonstrated, Americans’ beliefs about international issues are much closer to those being articulated in Brussels than in Washington.

In closing, the lead story in the Indianapolis Star had this to say: "His poll numbers, while still strong by historic standards, have steadily dropped during the past few months. Consumer confidence is down. The stock markets are sluggish. Support for his handling of foreign affairs is down. And the economy only seems to get more skittish the firmer Bush gets toward Iraq. About the only numbers going up are the numbers of the unemployed and the size of the national deficit."

Wouldn't it be great for once if a President used the words "economic development" in his state of union address? How do we accomplish this simple objective? Maybe some of us should simply ask the White House what it would take. I think that is a goal worth shooting for. Don't you?

I will leave at that for now.