{"id":14392,"date":"2008-01-28T16:25:32","date_gmt":"2008-01-28T21:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14392.html"},"modified":"2008-01-28T16:25:32","modified_gmt":"2008-01-28T21:25:32","slug":"is-the-country-better-off-now-than-seven-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/is-the-country-better-off-now-than-seven-years-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Is the country better off now than seven years ago?’"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Cole noted<\/a> this morning, “I honestly cannot recall a State of the Union address which has received less hype.” Neither can I. Usually, even for lame-duck presidents, the SOTU is a pretty significant moment of political theater. I remember the last addresses for Reagan and Clinton drew quite a bit of attention, but going into tonight’s speech, no one, on either side, seems to care at all. I frequently get the sense the country is asking Bush, almost in unison, “You’re still here?”<\/p>\n

Of course, the SOTU invariably leads to some reflection and introspection. Today, for example, a reporter asked<\/a> White House Press Secretary Dana Perino a very good question: “Is the country better off now than seven years ago?” Given the response, I don’t think Perino was prepared for the question.<\/p>\n

“Certainly seven years ago — well, seven years ago, right before September 11th, I think that people would say that the country certainly felt better off. There’s been — once we were confronted with terrorists who would fly jumbo jets into buildings and kill thousands of our citizens in an instant, it created a sense of fear and nervousness about our security. And that’s why the President decided to take on the terrorists head on and go on the offense.<\/p>\n

“And we have done that around the world. We have been successful so far in preventing another attack on our country. But it’s not for their lack of trying. And that’s another reason why the President — tonight you’ll hear him call on Congress to pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reauthorization. They have until Friday to do that, and the President sees no reason why they shouldn’t be able to get that done.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Um, Dana? (Can I call you “Dana”?) The question was, “Is the country better off now than seven years ago?” The fact that you couldn’t answer it — you barely tried — doesn’t exactly reflect well on Bush’s presidency.<\/p>\n

Of course, this shouldn’t come as too<\/i> big a surprise. What, exactly, could Perino say?
\n
\nConsider, for example, what Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, explained today in a WaPo op-ed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At the dawn of the 21st century, conventional wisdom was that America held unmatched cultural, economic and military power. George F. Will wrote: “It is good to be alive in America at the end of the first (but not the last) American century.” In late 1999, Charles Krauthammer wrote: “No other nation has exercised such military, economic, diplomatic and cultural reach since Rome. . . . America bestrides the world like a colossus.”<\/p>\n

Boy, have times changed.<\/p>\n

As 2007 drew to a close, a Newsweek International cover featured the image of a bruised Uncle Sam slumped in a boxing ring, under the headline: “Can America Get Back on Top?”<\/p>\n

So what happened? How did we go from dominant military, economic and cultural superpower to battered fighter in the corner?<\/p>\n

As President Bush prepares to deliver his final State of the Union address today, it’s fair to judge his tenure by assessing the country he inherited and the country he will leave behind. By any examination, the Bush administration has weakened the nation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m hard pressed to imagine how any reasonable person could disagree. Has everyone seen this chart<\/a>? Are there any<\/i> indicators that have moved in the right direction since Bush took office in 2001?<\/p>\n

Something to keep in mind while watching tonight’s theatrics — if<\/i> you’re watching tonight’s theatrics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Cole noted this morning, “I honestly cannot recall a State of the Union address which has received less hype.” Neither can I. Usually, even for lame-duck presidents, the SOTU is a pretty significant moment of political theater. I remember the last addresses for Reagan and Clinton drew quite a bit of attention, but going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}