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EDITOR'S
NOTE: This appears courtesy of UPI.
 resident
Bush began his State of the Union speech with a brilliant dramatic
device. He laid out the worst dangers and difficulties confronting
America today before declaring boldly, "Yet the state of our
Union has never been stronger." Long and loud applause followed.
That device
worked as well as it did because it captured the truth of the current
political situation. War and recession plague the United States.
Everybody knows it and no one would be comforted by attempts to
deny or soften the truth.
Yet Bush enjoys
popularity ratings of between 80 and 90 percent despite recession
and war because the American population blames him for neither and
trusts in his capacity to deal with both. He does so because Sept.
11, in addition to all its other consequences, was for him what
the social commentator Ben Wattenberg calls "a moment of political
truth" — one of those events that reveal the real qualities
that animate a politician underneath all the black arts of political
"spin" and opinion management.
Like Ronald
Reagan's gallant joking in the hospital following his shooting by
John Hinckley, or Margaret Thatcher's fortitude revealed by her
grim determination in the Falklands War, George W. Bush's calm and
confident leadership in the war on terrorism has permanently changed
the public's view of him. Once the public has such a privileged
glimpse of a leader's inner authority, it is thereafter willing
to grant him its confidence across the range of political issues.
And the president spoke Tuesday night with the knowledge that he
had the nation's backing.
But what were
the policies he advocated? Do they seem likely to succeed? And will
they retain America's backing if the going gets rougher? Bush asked
Americans to support his policies in three broad areas: the war
on terrorism, homeland security, and economic security. And that
order probably represents the public's view of the right order of
priorities as well.
In looking
ahead to his administration's conduct of the war on terrorism, the
president pulled not a single punch. He listed three nations —
Iran, Iraq, and North Korea — and made it clear that he would
not tolerate their continuing to threaten the world by allying themselves
with terrorist groups and acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
It would be
hard to be plainer than "I will not wait on events, while dangers
gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The
United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous
regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."
Now, these
words are almost certainly designed to persuade terrorist states
and rogue nations to come to terms. They may well have that effect.
But if not, then the president will have to follow through.
A president
who says such things and then does nothing would be engaging in
a very dangerous game of bluff — and nothing in Bush's history
suggests that he is inclined to such short-term deviousness.
So three nations
have been warned — and so has the American public. If Iraq
does not admit U.N. inspectors, if Iran does not cut its links with
terrorist groups, if North Korea does not halt its export of weapons
of mass destruction, the United States will take military action
against them.
Iran and Iraq
already were drawing closer together. That rapprochement may have
been one reason for including Iran in the ultimatum. And unless
both governments decide to surrender, an Iran-Iraq alliance of terrorist
states will presumably harden and increase the threat to their neighbors
— and to the United States.
Bush's message
has therefore reinforced itself: The war has not ended with victory
in Afghanistan; it has not even slowed down; we are simply pausing
before the next stage of a growing conflict. It is a somber message.
On the homeland-security
front, Bush was fairly confident in asking for bipartisan support
for such measures as higher spending on safeguards against bioterrorism
and safeguarding the border. Concern about the civil liberties of
those detained exists in Congress and the electorate, but for the
moment most people are ready to trust Bush and, according to the
polls, Attorney General John Ashcroft on the grounds that defeating
a ruthless terrorist enemy justifies a short-term suspension of
the rights of terrorist suspects.
Where the president
may be vulnerable — and still more Transport Secretary Norman
Mineta — is on the opposite front. If airport security fails
again and another plane is hijacked or destroyed by Middle Eastern
terrorists, people might ask if their safety has been sacrificed
to the political fear of being charged with ethnic profiling.
And on economic
security, Bush used the occasion to justify most of his established
domestic program from extending free trade through "fast track"
legislation to defending the tax cut. Although there were two minor
digs at the Democrats (over just those two issues), the president
was notably above-the-battle in tone.
That was hardly
difficult, however, because most of the president's agenda is reasonably
bipartisan by recent political standards. Education reform based
on higher spending is his main domestic priority, and the entire
budget increases spending across the board. No rolling back of government
was proposed, and the faith-based initiative is — when all
is said and done — a welfare program (in which, incidentally,
the faith-based component shrinks hourly). Even a liberal Democrat
has his work cut out to object passionately to such an agenda. A
Gingrichian conservative might have better reasons for complaint.
But very few
voters will complain about higher spending or even a higher deficit-save,
that is, for a few accountants not employed by Arthur Anderson.
The early stages of big spending are always popular; it is when
the bills come in that voters feel their own pain. And if that happens
here, Bush may be vulnerable again. Even if a careful analysis shows
higher spending to be the cause of later problems, the Democrats
have carefully laid the groundwork for blaming a tax cut that has
Bush's name indelibly stenciled on it. That danger, however, lies
in the future.
It was when
Bush came to his peroration that he soared. His evocation of a united
America perfectly expressed the mood of America post-9/11. And he
proposed to draw upon that national unity by such proposals as the
USA Freedom Corps and mentors who would "love children, especially
children whose parents are in prison, and we need more talented
teachers in troubled schools. USA Freedom Corps will expand and
improve the good efforts of AmeriCorps and Senior Corps to recruit
more than 200,000 new volunteers."
Yes, that is
important and valuable. But America was not united before Sept.
11 and its new-found unity may well be frittered away if policies
to sustain and deepen it are not adopted now. In particular the
barriers of race, language, ethnicity, class and culture still exist
in America. He proposed very little that would overcome these barriers
or even dismantle the balkanizing tendencies of much official policy.
To be sure,
Mr. Bush's own personality, as seen on Sept. 11, is one factor unifying
people. He is a president with authority and a transparently decent
man around whom people now naturally rally.
But as the
nation enters into the dark room of a continued war on terrorism
against the background of a continuing recession, he may need to
think more carefully about how to shape a permanently united America
from our present multicultural flux.
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