State of the Union

Several people have e-mailed me and asked if I watched the SOTU address last night and what my reaction was. Well, I didn't watch it- I was watching hockey's All Star game festivities- the "Young Stars" game and Skills Competition was last night, the actual game tonight. This President's credibility on Iraq, the main issue which trumps all others for him is almost none. Normally I would watch simply as a student of political theater- but not this year.

Some thoughts I saw worth reviewing are below:

First and foremost- James Fallows in The Atlantic has a very entertaining analysis, where he picks apart the text. His commentary is well worth reading. Fallows responds the the line "First, we must balance the federal budget" with

Pelosi up like a shot! This may have been too risky a line for Bush, since the Democrats are obviously cheering in sarcastic glee, given the spending record of the Republican Congress and Bush’s failure to ever veto a single spending plan. On the other hand, members of the President’s base may need to hear this.

Personally, I figured coming from Bush's mouth this must have been a laugh line, but again I did not see the speech to judge the reaction.

Andrew Sullivan also has some section by section analysis- one highlight is here.

9:52 p.m."Whatever you voted for, you didn't vote for failure." Damn right. But this president gave us failure. He failed in his task of basic competence and decency in the war. That is why the situation in the "here and now" is so grave. Because of his delinquency and arrogance. The American people are not stupid. And their approval rating simply reflects the reality they see.

The prevailing opinion was that he gave a good, but not great speech. Bush was gracious towards the new "Madame Speaker" and struck the correct bi-partisan notes. Most on the right seemed to think he did a good job of laying out the case for Iraq role in the GWOT. These two things, of course, are separate in most Democrats' mind. But Bush has not explained this particularly well in the past, and I thought he did a good job of explaining his position last night.

One logical trap they end up in is the whole idea that our commitment in Iraq is "not open ended" and the Maliki government knows they must succeed this time...or, or, or what, exactly? We'll pull out? But that's failure. We cannot pull out unless they succeed, but if they do not succeed we cannot pull out or chaos ensues. Failure is not an option. Q.E.D. This is a critical corner we've painted ourselves into, with our dependence on the Iraqi government paramount. Fallows describes this dilemma below:

Okay, here is the return of the Gaping Logical Hole. If it’s not open ended, we must be telling the Iraqis to shape up, or else. Or else what? We’ll leave—and bring on all the catastrophic consequences of a failed Iraq the President has just warned us about? Someone in the White House needs to work up an answer to this “Or else what?” question about Iraq.

Are we really comfortable "outsourcing" the entire ability to succeed on this fractured Iraqi government? Some "era of personal responsibility" as Bush spoke about back in 2000. Actually, this idea has become more and more of a conservative talking point about the war- "It's the Iraqis fault it's not working." This is nothing but a shameful evasion of administration responsibility- unworthy of our men and women in uniform who have sacrificed so much for this mission. Fallows is right- someone in the White House needs to come up with some better answers, and soon.