All things being equal, Bush could probably think of better circumstances going into tonight’s State of the Union address.
He won a second term by the narrowest amount for an incumbent in American history. Bush’s inaugural address confused the world, and the White House spent the week after the speech trying to explain what the president was talking about. His approval ratings are the weakest of any president starting a second term since the dawn of modern polling.
And then there’s the policy problems. On foreign affairs, Iraq held a seemingly successful election, but the country is still a mess and our occupation is still a major crisis. Closer to home, Bush’s political opponents appear to already have more than enough votes to defeat the signature policy initiative of his presidency.
The president, in other words, may swagger and smirk tonight, but his presidency is hardly on strong footing. That said, Bush has a plan.
In his State of the Union address at 9 tonight, President Bush will press his plan to overhaul Social Security, call for a near-freeze in nondefense spending and reiterate his proposal to relax immigration laws, a senior administration official said yesterday.
The president also will make clear his desire for a diplomatic solution to the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program, call on North Korea to return to six-way talks in a bid to end the nuclear crisis gripping the Korean Peninsula, and rally Americans on the need for the United States to stay the course in Iraq, pointing to the successful elections on Sunday as proof that the U.S. policy there is working.
If that’s the plan, it still needs some work.
Indeed, looking over that agenda, assuming that’s what Bush sticks to tonight, it’s hard to see where Bush is going to get a boost.
* The Social Security debate, so far at least, has been won by Bush’s opponents.
* A near-freeze in nondefense spending will never fly with this spendthrift Congress, and more importantly, it may be politically disastrous. It gives Dems the opportunity to tell working families that Bush wants to protect tax cuts for millionaires, but wants to invest less in education, health care, veterans’ benefits, transportation, community development, child care, and enforcing environmental regulations.
* Bush’s proposal to relax immigration laws is wildly unpopular with his own party and is going nowhere fast.
* The president’s call on North Korea to help dissipate the nuclear crisis gripping the Korean Peninsula faces the burden of bad timing. Just today we learned that North Korea is selling processed uranium for atomic weapons — and we’re not even sure who all of its customers are.
Bush isn’t a bad salesman once he abandons the truth, and maybe he’ll be able to pull this package together for a successful SOTU. But if I were a betting man, I wouldn’t count on it.