United America
President Bush’s first State of the Union address.

Januray 30, 2002 9:00 a.m.

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.