MSNBC’s Chris Matthews was thoroughly impressed with the president’s State of the Union, insisting that Bush was “at the top of his game,” and delivered “a very powerful speech.” Apparently, he got the wrong talking points — the rest of the leading conservative voices in the media aren’t happy at all.
Fox News’ Bob Novak:
While jumping up on cue to cheer during the speech and delivering rave reviews afterward in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall, conservative members of Congress were deeply disappointed by George W. Bush Tuesday night. It was not merely that the president abandoned past domestic goals. He appeared to be moving toward bigger government. The consensus on the Right was that President Bush’s fifth State of the Union Address was his worst.
The Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes:
His assertion that “we are winning” in Iraq was strong, but the remainder of the speech was mild and more moderate…. The president’s words, however, were not as forceful as expected.
The president’s State of the Union Address will be little noted and not long remembered. There was a sense that he was talking at, not to, the country. He asserted more than he persuaded, and he chose to redeclare his beliefs rather than argue for them in any depth.
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page:
On the home front, President Bush was definitely playing “miniball,” as he likes to describe small political ideas. At times his agenda had the feel of Clintonian “triangulation,” an attempt to play it safe and inoculate Republicans against some of the likely Democratic themes this election year.
The president’s headline-grabbing assertion that America is “addicted” to oil is wonderfully useless. If it means only — and what else can it mean? — that in the near term we will urgently need a lot of oil, it is banal. The amusingly discordant word “addicted” couched censoriousness — the president as national scold; our use of oil as somehow irresponsible — in the vocabulary of addiction, which is the therapeutic language of Oprah Nation.
Not to worry. The president says that by 2025 America will “replace” — a certain ambiguity there — “more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East.” Replace with what? Other oil? Never mind. Such recurring goals, located safely over the horizon, resemble Soviet agricultural quotas, except that no one will be shot when they are not met.
And these are the folks who are already predisposed to agree with what Bush has to say. Hmm.