Kathlyn HotynskiOn Tuesday night, I did something I haven’t done since sixth grade – I watched the State of the Union address in its entirety. To be honest, I felt a sense of accomplishment for sitting through President Bush’s eloquent speech on our condition as a country and his plans for the future.
Taking into account Bush’s deer-in-headlights approach to opposition of his Iraq war plan, 33 percent approval rating and the Republicans’ embarrassing fall from power in Congress, I give him credit for not wetting himself onstage.
Still, after watching the address, it feels as if Bush is doing nothing but talking himself around the real issues at hand, as he has done in past press conferences and State of the Union addresses.
By starting the body of his speech with a proposal to balance the federal budget in five years and save programs like Medicare and Social Security without mentioning privatization, Bush sounded as if he had shifted a little to the left in his initiatives. He called for an end to overspending at the national level, but coming from someone whose own spending spree puts Ronald Reagan to shame, it isn’t saying much – especially after the deficit grew under Republican power throughout the last six years.
Unfortunately, Bush also failed to remember the ongoing, unpredictably violent war in Iraq as a potential road block to any balanced budget proposal
Reasonably affordable things like college tuition have consistently increased in price under the president’s watch. Cutting money from federal financial aid and allowing companies to ship jobs overseas is not the way to go about being fiscally responsible.
With education, the No Child Left Behind Act has been flawed from the beginning. The president claimed in his address that its goal has been to hold schools accountable, and NCLB has done that. However, with low funding and general student apathy towards standardized testing, something else needs to be done to improve the education system nationwide.
With NCLB still concerning itself only with test scores in reading and math, schools have consistently been forced to cut money from creativity programs such as art and theater since its inception. But not every student sees the world in black and white logic where the difference between success and failure is measured by whether or not a person can analyze numerical data.
Health care continues to be the primary concern of the American people and the president outlined a plan to supposedly make private health insurance more affordable. Bush has repeated this proposition in the past, including last year’s State of the Union. However, nothing has been done to curb these rising costs and only time will tell if this solution will steer the country in the right direction.
Bush repeated his proposal about immigration from the 2006 State of the Union address, offering illegal immigrants temporary permits to work in the U.S. and ways to gain legal citizenship. He also said the Border Patrol would be doubled and funding would go to “new infrastructure and technology” to aid them in securing the border. With immigration continually a hot-button issue over the past six years, I’ve started equating Bush’s policies with those of police trying to stop college binge drinking. No matter what solution anyone comes up with, it is impossible to stop the problem at hand. People are still going to sneak into the country, whether or not there is a wall or temporary-worker program, and college students are still going to suck down kegs of Miller Genuine Draft every
weekend.
The one issue where Bush did a 180-degree spin – or flip-flopped, if you will – is that of environmental protection. After spending most of his presidency allowing lax regulations on toxic emission standards and as increasing the U.S. dependence on foreign oil, he turned around and set high standards for the development of alternative fuels for the future. Bush made it clear he wouldn’t deny global warming and its effects around the world by stating new technologies would “help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change.” Has the president turned into a tree-hugging, tambourine-banging hippie environmentalist? Well, no – he just realized dodging the question of global climate change wouldn’t work with a Democratic majority.
Of course, what would a Bush speech be without mentioning the war on terrorism? Nothing says “raise my approval rating” like freedom, terrorism and Sept. 11. The president extended his streak of beating the “they hate our freedom” drum to 15 speeches.
Bush also dabbled in a few examples of possible attacks that the government has thwarted. After hearing this, I decided to do a little extended research on the subject myself by searching Lexis-Nexis for articles containing information about each bust. Interestingly enough, I couldn’t find anything on any of the so-called “threats” in any newspaper or media outlet. Another speech, another scare tactic used to rally further support for military offensive moves and distract from the problems closer to home.
The main topic of debate heading into the State of the Union was the war in Iraq, but Bush failed to address the issue until the last 15 minutes of his speech. The delay demonstrates how the president is still finding ways to dodge questions that need answers.
When Bush finally got around to the subject that played a huge part in giving the Democrats the majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate, he proposed adding 92,000 more troops to Iraq over the next five years. With this response, it seems the president has failed to listen or look for any alternative resolutions other than adding more soldiers.
Granted, the issue is much more complicated than just complete withdrawal, but Bush’s inability to listen or come up with any other solutions has been consistently stubborn. Maybe with the Democrats in power, he will be forced to take a different road than the one that has led America astray over the past six years.
McCormick is a sophomore print journalism major and editorial editor of The Spectator.
