Bush's State of the Union: Freedom, Oil, and Animal-Human Hybrids

Why does this picture seem so familiar? Another year, another speech, and none of what's said ever gets done. The President gave his sixth State of the Union address and it was a combination of laundry list slash early 20th century Democratic speech. The foreign policy aspect of his address could have come from Woodrow Wilson or Harry S. Truman. The difference is the disagreement over severity. The President and the Republican majority prefer to align the war on terror with the great wars of Europe. The reality is something very different. On the domestic side it's a difference of saying and doing. The President says he'll do a lot of things. He will, in fact, do none of them. Unfortunately, by reading between the lines you see the true State of the Union.

In July of 1945, a conference of the "Big Three" took place in Potsdam, Germany. It was the first time new President Harry Truman would meet Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. The crimes of Stalin were no secret at the time. His mass murderer score sheet was just slightly below Adolf Hitler, the man whose deposition provoked the meeting in the first place. Truman came out of the conference liking Stalin. The point is that while we want freedom for all sometimes compromises need to be made in the name of immediate peace. If George Bush were to hold strictly to his speech he would have been obligated, if he had been President in Potsdam, to turn the guns on Stalin immediately after V-E Day. Churchill cautioned the possibility and General Patton outright endorsed it. It was Truman, whose strength with patience prevented the unthinkable to occur.

It becomes a question of sacrifice. We were willing to sacrifice to fight Hitler, but not Stalin. Should we be removing the option of evaluating each situation on a case-by-case basis? Should we be able to cherry pick, in the name of our own security, between what sacrifices we're willing to make and which we are not? Between Stalin and Hitler? Between the Taliban and Saddam Hussein? Bush's speech paints a black and white picture, which is nothing new. The world has nuance, so should our President, so should we.

Making the world safe for democracy was a phrase of Woodrow Wilson that President Bush likes to stand behind. He did so in his State of the Union. But there are democracies out there, which are not in tune with Bush's idealism. He spoke of Palestine and Iran as needing to be freed from their totalitarian regimes. The problem is that the leadership in these two countries were democratically elected. Palestine had free elections and they elected terrorists. Democracy is not the easy solution Bush paints it to be. It's a voting process, not a philosophy where everyone voting suddenly becomes rational.

To invoke another Presidential moment from our past, John F. Kennedy made a pledge to put a man on the moon by 1970. In terms of the grandeur of human accomplishment and propaganda in the Cold War, it was a sacrifice Americans were willing to make. Why won't this President step up and say we should commit ourselves, in similar fashion, to getting off the internal combustion engine by 2015? What we need is a Marshall Plan. What we need is a Manhattan Project. What we need is a space race effort to remove foreign oil from our lives. Bush danced around the issue and said we need to kick our oil addiction. Sounds oddly familiar to something John Kerry was saying on the campaign trail. But clearly, as a Texas oilman, the words rang out hollow. Nothing will be done to kick oil. No politician, not our President, no Democrat or Republican has the courage to make bold pledges that challenge Americans.

The rest of the speech was token. Token health care. Token education. Token letter from the common man. No effort will ever be made by this President on these issues and the mere mention is just window dressing. It makes good sound bites for the evening news. Health care is a disaster. Education is a disaster. Bush's solution is that we need to learn more math. He's going to send out an initiative to learn more math. That's a bold agenda right there. Learn more math.

If there is a bright side to all this, there is one thing Bush is always good for. Every state of the union has a curve ball where you watch and say, "What?" "What did he just say?" "Is he really bringing that up at the State of the Union?" Last year it was steroids in baseball, a very irrelevant issue for a country at war. This year got an even more outrageous spit take statement. Animal-human hybrids. What? Did he just say that? Is he really bringing that up at the State of the Union? Well, I for one am glad that the President is protecting our freedoms against the mighty centaurs.

All we're left to do is shake our heads in disbelief. The twentieth century had some real titans in the Presidency. So far we're zero for one this century with no Wilsons, Kennedys, or Trumans on the horizon. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe we've advanced to the point where we don't need men like that. Maybe the war on terror, which isn't a very big problem at all, is the biggest problem we'll have to deal with and because it's so minor our leaders are forced to hype it up. Probably not. A bold and ambitious leader is always a good thing. I'll hold out hopes that'll I'll get to see one in my lifetime, but I realize that's about as likely as my seeing a centaur.