George W. brings his A-game
George W. Bush brought his A-game when he delivered his State of the Union address this week to a joint session of Congress. The annual appearance in the Capitol occurred at a time when assorted polls indicate that the stratospheric approval ratings he enjoyed as recently as a year ago are now merely tropospheric (which is still pretty darn good).
The president’s message was only partly directed to the lawmakers who gathered in the chamber of the House of Representatives. His real audience was the 100 million or so rank-and-file Americans watching at home.
“This nation has many challenges,” the president declared, tacitly acknowledging growing public concern about the seemingly imminent war against Saddam Hussein’s rogue regime as well as the continued sluggishness of the domestic economy.
The president went a long way toward allaying those concerns not only with the substance of his message, but also with his remarkably adroit delivery of that message. He did much to reaffirm, to those whose faith in his leadership has wavered of late, that he is equal to the awesome challenges that have been thrust upon him at this tenuous moment in this nation’s history.
As to the specifics of his speech, the president laid out a broad four-part domestic agenda that he wants the Republican-controlled Congress to address this year. He wants to strengthen the economy, he said, by creating more jobs. He wants to provide high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans, he said, and prescription drugs for seniors. He seeks greater energy independence while also seeking to improve the environment.
The president’s tax cut plan, which he proposed earlier this month, falls under the rubric of strengthening the economy. Bush made a strong pitch for the 10-year, $674 billion package during his speech, enunciating the reasoning behind it. “Jobs are created when the economy grows,” he said. “The economy grows when Americans have more money to spend and invest. And the best and fairest way to make sure Americans have money is not to tax it away in the first place.”
Bush’s primer on stimulating economic growth was not especially well received by Democratic lawmakers in the chamber, many of whom dismiss his plan as some sort of giveaway to the rich. But Bush was making his case to taxpaying Americans, 92 million of whom would receive, on average, a $1,083 tax cut in 2003 if the Congress approves the president’s plan.
As to Democratic insinuations that the Bush tax cut is tilted to the wealthy, the president offered the example of a middle-class family of four with an annual income of $40,000. Their taxes would fall from $1,178 to $45 per year, the president said. That certainly went over well with folks at home.
Meanwhile, the president used much of the second half of his speech to renew his case against Saddam Hussein. “The dictator of Iraq is not disarming,” he said. “To the contrary, he is deceiving.” And it is only a matter of time, the president warned, before an outlaw regime like Saddam’s gives or sells nuclear, chemical or biological weapons “to their terrorist allies, who would use them without the least hesitation.”
Bush’s strong pronouncements were intended to re-galvanize public sentiment in this country that the outlaw government in Baghdad poses a gathering threat to America’s security. And the president appears to have successfully made his case. More than three-quarters of those who viewed his speech expressed support for U.S. military action to remove Saddam, according to the CBS News poll. President Bush had a lot at stake this week with his State of the Union address. And the overwhelmingly favorable reception it received from the viewing public shows he rose to the occasion.
(Joseph Perkins is a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and can be reached at Joseph.Perkins@UnionTrib.com.)