Scoring the SOTU
How did the president do? An NRO symposium.

Compiled by Kathryn Jean Lopez
January 30, 2002 8:50 a.m.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Read NRO's instant analysis of the State of the Union address, from Kate O'Beirne, Rich Lowry, Ramesh Ponnuru, Jonah Goldberg, Rod Dreher, and more in "The Corner."

Michael Knox Beran, author of The Last Patrician: Bobby Kennedy and the End of American Aristocracy

It was a good speech, in places a great one. I salute the commander-in-chief. At the same time, I raise two concerns about his domestic policy.

1. It is always an interesting, and sometimes a brilliant, tactic to poach your opponent's most attractive ideas and make them your own. Thus, the president called for a patient's bill of rights, the expansion of federal education programs, a more intensive regulation of the capital markets. This on top of the federalization of the airport-security forces. Popular measures, all. But the game is a dangerous one; a politician makes concessions in order to flourish politically; but such concessions are never without cost, and in this case will place additional burdens on an economy that is already being asked to bear the expense of war. A nation can enjoy it all for a time — guns and public butter, legions and state-sponsored circuses; but such indulgence must often be expiated by a hard penance; and a bout of reckless legislative gorging may contribute to years of economic lassitude.

2. To me the most distinctive thing about President Bush's program of Compassionate Conservatism has always been its skepticism towards the older models of state-subsidized caring. Compassionate Conservatism meant allowing the nation to tap those private pools of compassion that have for too long been bottled up by misguided government policy. It meant school liberation — giving parents greater opportunity to choose schools for their kids that do the best job of shaping character. It meant finding new ways to make use of the abilities of those possessed of spiritual vocations — people whose powers are often overlooked in a too complacently secular world. It meant cutting out bureaucratic middlemen — the toll-collectors and timeservers of the nanny state — through the use of vouchers in areas like education and welfare services. I am not familiar enough with the details of the president's proposed service corps to offer any worthwhile critique of its strengths and weaknesses; but I worry whether something of the spirit of Compassionate Conservatism is being sacrificed here; whether we are returning to the idea of the state-sponsored orchestration of virtue, and turning away from the work of strengthening private networks of love.

Peter Berkowitz, professor at George Mason University School of Law & contributing editor at The New Republic. He is the author of Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism.

The president's State of the Union address always presents a promising spectacle: the grand chamber in the Capitol building, the annual gathering of the leaders of the separate powers of government, the well-choreographed display of the best bipartisan good manners. This time the president lived up to the promise.

Gone was the irrepressible frat-boy smirk. In its place, punctuating his sentences and accenting his silences, was a mellow smile heavy with conviction and concern.

The president began and ended with the war on terror. His message was that our cause is just, our achievement since September 11 — liberating Afghanistan from tyrannical Taliban rule and destroying the al Qaeda terrorists camps that the Taliban harbored — monumental, and our work-fighting terrorism around the world and opposing states such as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea that continue to harbor it — only just begun.

He called for the same unity and resolve in facing the challenges at home that we had displayed in fighting the enemy abroad. We must increase spending on defense and homeland security. We must extend unemployment benefits and health-care coverage. We must create new jobs. We must improve our children's education. We must stimulate the economy. We must hold our corporations to the highest standards. We must protect workers 401(k) and pension plans.

In all this, the president spoke as a conservative Republican, a "proud member" of his party. But his speech also reflected a refined understanding of the public good. Government — limited but nevertheless government — for this conservative Republican was part of the solution. Building on President Clinton's AmeriCorps, President Bush introduced the new USA Freedom Corps, whose aim is to harness the spirit of public service in the American people for homeland security, for rebuilding broken communities in the United States, and for offering assistance to the needy abroad.

In particular, the president emphasized the importance of encouraging "development and education and opportunity in the Islamic world." This is good politics: Poverty, ignorance, and hopelessness are breeding grounds for violence. And sound principle: Liberty and justice as our nation understands them are good for people everywhere. And in the execution, fraught with uncertainty and risk.

Today it will be business as usual. Last night the president forcefully reminded us that it is a crucial part of our nation's business to honor the promise of "freedom and the dignity of every life."

Victor Davis Hanson, NRO contributor & author, most recently, of Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power

Presidents routinely employ platitudes that Americans are good, strong, and stand for freedom and liberty. But rarely do any marry that obligatory reassurance with specific references to what and who we are not. President Bush, however, explicitly cited Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as the new "Axis." Last night he also condemned Hezbollah and Hamas by name, and damned our enemies with the vocabulary of confidence and honesty — "They were as wrong as they were evil" — rather than Clintonian euphemism. The world has changed since September 11.

For over a decade Americans have watched as unelected thugs and wretched societies warned us that we were both weak and decadent — and so could do nothing against either outlaw regimes or the worldwide terrorists they sponsor. In answer, Mr. Bush now tells the nation that, in fact, we are as powerful as we are decent — and then went on to enumerate the age-old values of the West like free markets, personal liberty, religious tolerance, and consensual government. He senses a great yearning on the part of the American people for transcendence and at last to tend to things too long neglected — and to do so deliberately, vigorously, but also without either braggadocio or swagger. And so armed with that conviction, an American president in the midst of recession quite unapologetically promises that a long-overdue and worldwide reckoning is on the horizon against medieval iniquity — as deadly as it will be just.

In this age of cynicism and irony, neither presidents nor Americans are supposed to think, much less talk, in moral absolutes like these. But just as Mr. Bush himself does best when he is at odds with his safe and reassuring patrician, New England, and corporate ancestry — instead emphasizing his new evangelical faith, sometime reckless Texas affinities, and unrepentant popular tastes — so too he has discovered that his country resonates when it follows its own historical sense of right rather than seeks approval from sophisticated cynics abroad.

Saddam Hussein, Yasser Arafat, and the mullahs in Iran — and perhaps even the high commissioners of the EU — all I think don't quite yet get the new mood of the American people, one which Mr. Bush is brilliantly reflecting, rather than himself merely creating. After two-kilotons and 3,000 dead, we are now in the age of "Let's Roll," rather than "I Feel Your Pain" and "It Takes a Village." And last night we saw that we have the right man at the right time for the right cause.

Michael Ledeen, an NRO contributing editor. Ledeen holds the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute & is author of, among others, Tocqueville on American Character & Machiavelli on Modern Leadership

I am still pinching myself to make sure I'm not dreaming it all up. He gets better and better, he wears so well, he's really us. I'm so grateful for him, and especially when I try to imagine Al Gore standing up there.

The main thing, it seems to me, is that this was a very radical speech. Very radical, and you can be sure that the Left got it. He challenged their carefully crafted culture, head on. No more "if it feels good, do it." Now it's time for the American genius for dealing with our common problems.

This may have been the first time in American history that an intense internal debate over foreign policy was settled in a State of the Union speech. For many months now, the administration has been divided between those who believed we could make a deal with the Iranian regime, and those who insisted that we had to fight the mullahs. That dispute was settled tonight, when the president correctly and forcefully denounced the unelected rulers of Iran who ignore the desires of the Iranian people for freedom. And as between those who have been arguing for a "go slow" approach to Iraq and those who have been insisting that we cannot wait because time then works in favor of our enemies, the president eloquently rejected the go-slowers. And while he was at it (you just gotta love this guy, he really goes for it), he delivered a few zingers to our "timid" allies. I trust the French translation will be accurate.

No doubt some will bemoan the omission of some program or other, but I was grateful for the lack of the usual laundry list. He understands that he can't mobilize the country over dozens of bills and amendments; he wants to pin his congressional opponents between the hard place of his astonishingly steady popularity and the rock of the urgency of the moment.

Those who niggle and whine will have missed the essence of a great speech, which is that the president laid claim not only to political leadership, but to cultural leadership as well. The courage of his foreign policy is of a piece with his insistence that America has a core mission — the "vision thing" as his dad once dismissively termed it, and that mission is about freedom, both for us and for all those who wish to join with us.

He's right. That's what we're all about.

Mark R. Levin, NRO contributing editor

George W. Bush is a great war president. On Sept. 20, he told Congress, the America people, and the world that he would lead our nation into battle against terrorists and the outlaw regimes that harbor them. And he is doing so with extraordinary competence and resolve.

The battle of Afghanistan is essentially over. This is a remarkable achievement when one considers that a mere four months ago, the U.S. had no military presence there, controlled no forward bases, and lacked sufficient intelligence assets in the area. Mr. Bush says what he means and delivers on what he says. Every reputable opinion poll shows that the president has earned the public's trust, confidence, and respect. The American people know a leader when they see one.

On Tuesday night, President Bush reported that he's already taking the war to terrorists in Somalia and the Philippines. He pointedly warned North Korea, Iran, and especially Iraq that they have much to fear from the U.S. He also made clear to Yasser Arafat just days ago that he was no longer trusted to advance peace in the Middle East. So much has changed since Sept. 11, and all to the good.

After a decade of severe budget cuts, Mr. Bush proposed spending $48 billion more on defense, the largest increase in the Pentagon's budget since the Reagan presidency. Yes, Mr. Bush acknowledged the deficit will subsequently grow, but he made no apologies for it. The president also renewed his commitment to a strategic-defense shield to protect the U.S. from a nuclear-missile attack.

I am, however, frustrated with the president's rather confusing domestic agenda. On the one hand he offers bold proposals, including privatizing part of Social Security and making permanent the tax cuts that were passed last year. On the other hand, he urges new health-care entitlements and a larger federal role in education. I reject the idea that a man who is so principled and forthcoming about matters of peace and war is, at the same time, expedient and cynical about matters of domestic governance.

Mr. Bush's speech makes clear that he is not so much committed to reducing the reach of the welfare state as he is to making it more responsive to consumers. He believes Social Security should be reformed to create investment options, not to limit the size of the federal government. He supports modest tax cuts to stimulate economic growth, not to limit federal spending. And he proposes as part of his agenda a renewed effort to enact additional health-care entitlements, which addresses a perceived consumer demand or need, but which will clearly expand the reach of government.

None of this diminishes in any way Mr. Bush's truly exceptional statesmanship in carrying out his primary responsibility to the American people, i.e., ensuring their defense against foreign enemies. And it is for this reason he will be counted among this country's great presidents.

David Limbaugh, syndicated columnist & lawyer. Limbaugh is author of Absolute Power, about the Clinton-Reno Justice Department.

What jumped out at me most as I watched the President's speech was his character and leadership demonstrated, respectively, by the continuity of his message and his patience and resolve in fulfilling his objectives.

As we listened to his priorities we were reminded that, but for the adjustments born from the exigencies of war, his agenda remains the same.

While it could be said that he proposed a laundry list of action items, very few of them were new. His list, unlike Clinton's, was not a basket of
goodies for every new conceivable constituent.

He trumpeted the same themes he promoted during the campaign: tax reform, education, free trade, energy dependency, rebuilding our defenses, missile defense, partial privatization of Social Security, faith-based initiatives, prescription drugs and life.

And as for the war, we got more of the same, a marked continuity in his plan. He told us from the outset that it would be a long war, that it was between good and evil, that it would be fought on many different fronts (financial, intelligence, diplomatic, military, etc.), that some of our actions would be highly visible and some would be clandestine, that we would pursue terrorists everywhere and any nations that sponsor them together with those hostile nations who are developing weapons of mass destruction. He reiterated every one of those goals tonight, and if anything, ratcheted up his commitment to achieve them.

This continuity begets predictability, which begets reliability, which begets public confidence and assurance, which are vital during these times.

Underlying every word he uttered was the theme: we can count on this president.

Peter Robinson, host of Uncommon Knowledge (PBS) & author of It's My Party: A Republican's Messy Love Affair with the GOP

Two-thirds of a marvelous speech.

At the beginning and end of the address, when the president spoke about the war on terrorism, the speech was well crafted, his delivery composed, energetic, and confident.

But in the middle, when the president spoke about domestic policy, the speech degenerated into a mere grab bag of initiatives — unimaginative initiatives at that — while his delivery grew uneven. As the president urged Congress to demonstrate the same bipartisanship in domestic policy that it had displayed in supporting the war, Republicans rose to give him a series of ovations while the Democrats remained in their seats, stony-faced. The president permitted himself to look almost annoyed.

President Bush clearly prefers the role of world leader to that of partisan combatant. Yet, as the Democrats demonstrated tonight when they sat on their hands, politics is back. The president should welcome the return of open competition between our two great parties — then wade right into it. A good first step? Now that he has signed Teddy Kennedy's fiasco of education bill, the president should go right back to advocating the school-choice measures that Kennedy blocked.