Here are things I’m picking up. Not that different from what’s being reported elsewhere, but for what it’s worth: the speech will probably, with applause added in, tick in at just over a hour. The Social Security portion will be a real nuts-and-bolts tutorial and the clearest explanation many people will have heard of how the program works. Bush bucked up congressional Republicans last week at their retreat and the speech should fortify them further. There will be a few more details on what he is proposing, but not much. A possible analogy is last year when nervous Republicans were telling the Bush campaign to come out with its agenda in the spring. The campaign thought it was wiser to keep its powder dry until the convention. In a similar way, on Social Security the time for details will come later, or so the White House believes. Bush will, of course, talk about Iraq, in more specific terms than in the inaugural, but he won’t back off the inaugural one bit. The speech will also have a substantial section on social and moral issues–including some new proposals–but this portion of the speech will probably get lost in the shuffle in the coverage. It’s not a laundry list speech, but is fairly coherent, tied together by the theme of our obligation to future generations. It has an ending the Bush officials think should be quite moving. But we’ll hear it all soon enough….