State of the Union

Speaking as a weakened national leader with severely limited resources and most of his “political capital” squandered, President Bush made a relatively conciliatory State of the Union Speech. Most people agree that the reliance on Middle Eastern oil is deleterious to the well being of the United States and that an emphasis on science education is imperative.

The problem of course is how do you believe any thing he or the administration says given their history of misleading statements or grand proposals that are then not subsequently funded. Until a budget proposal is formulated and acted on, you have to remain skeptical about the follow through on his ideas.

Even the mild attempt to lower political divisiveness has to be measured against the statements that are immediately contradicted by facts. It doesn’t seem to phase him to keep repeating assertions that have been disproved or are just wrong. With a base and an electorate that doesn’t seem to care, he continues to get away with it.

Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post today wrote an analysis pointing out the errors in the more egregious statements:

Bush strongly suggested that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks could have been prevented if the phone calls of two hijackers had been monitored under the program. This echoes an assertion made earlier this year by Vice President Cheney. But the Sept. 11 commission and congressional investigators said the government had compiled significant information on the two suspects before the attacks and that bureaucratic problems -- not a lack of information -- were the main reasons for the security breakdown. The FBI did not even know where the two suspects lived and missed numerous opportunities to track them down in the 20 months before the attacks.

In other sections of his speech, Bush omitted context or made rhetorical claims that are open to question.

Referring to Iraq, he said the United States is "continuing reconstruction efforts." He did not use the word "spending" because officials say the administration does not intend to seek any new funds for Iraq reconstruction in the budget request to be submitted to Congress this month. About $18 billion was previously budgeted, and $16 billion of that has been committed, but nearly a third was devoted to security and law enforcement.

At another point, Bush said the number of jobs went up by 4.6 million in the past two and half years. There was a reason he chose not to start from the beginning of his presidency -- that would have brought the net number of added jobs down to 2 million over the five-year period.

Bush also made a pair of contradictory pledges on the budget. He said the budget deficit -- which has soared during his presidency -- is on track to decline by half by 2009. But he also urged a permanent extension of his tax cuts, due to expire in five years. The Congressional Budget Office says this would send the budget deficit soaring after 2011.

He repeatedly warned against the dangers of "isolationism," but the Democratic leadership has not called for isolationist policies, and polls show that the American public has little interest in them.

Bush ended his address with a stirring image that "every great movement of history comes to a point of choosing." But then he said, "The United States could have accepted the permanent division of Europe, and been complicit in the oppression of others."
This is historically misleading. At the end of World War II, the United States allowed the division of Europe between Soviet and Western spheres, though it drew the line at giving up West Berlin. And the United States permitted the Soviet Union's grabbing of large parts of other countries -- or even whole countries, such as the Baltic States.