There was an air of unreality, I thought, about the first half of President Bush’s State of the Union speech last night. Either that, or I was watching the President in some alternate reality world.
He talked about how well the economy was going, something that is news to all of us in Michigan. We’ve had months --years, really -- of job losses in our incredibly shrinking auto industry. Pfizer’s stunning announcement Monday that it would eliminate thousands of life sciences jobs came like a blow falling on a bruise.
But what was oddest was how much time went by before the President got down to addressing the elephant in the room.
Before, that is, he mentioned the issue that had lost his party control of Congress, and turned the vast majority of the American people against him. I’m talking, of course, about the war in Iraq.
The President did not seem to win any converts last night for his decision to make one last attempt to pour in more American troops to try to win by escalating the violence.
There will be plenty of discussion on this network and in the nation’s newspapers as to whether his policies are right or wrong.
What amazed me was that he took so long to address the war. I thought that he would have found it necessary to confront it, head-on, to say to the people, look: We are in a difficult jam.
I have made this controversial decision, I believe it to be right, and I ask for your support.
And then he could have said something along the lines of, “but meanwhile, the well-being of the American people require we do these other things -- and laid out his domestic policy agenda.
What I am about to say may sound a little unfair, but what I saw last night reminded me a little bit of a story President Ford told about Richard Nixon’s last cabinet meeting three days before he resigned.
The “smoking gun” tape proving Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate coverup had just been released. Nixon convened a tension-filled cabinet which waited to hear what he would do.
Nixon said, “I want to address the most important issue confronting the nation. Inflation.”
Ford and the other cabinet members stared, unbelieving. Nixon proposed a summit conference to tackle inflation. Finally, Vice-President Ford spoke up, changed the subject, and said he couldn’t defend Nixon any more. The attorney general spoke up and said that he thought Nixon no longer had the authority to govern.
When the meeting was over, even Nixon recognized that his presidency was over too. President Bush is not, of course, in anything like the same boat. But Iraq seems increasingly to be becoming virtually the only topic in the national conversation.
And when you consider all the other problems we are facing, especially perhaps here in Michigan -- that is both scary, and bad.
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