Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Let's go through the speech, shall we?  Let's see.  Intro, intro.  Mention of Correta Scott King.  Intro.  Intro.  Rambling.  More rambling.  Freedom is on the march.  Pabulum.  Hot air.  Nada.  Nada.  Wave to the guests.  Pabulum.  We're thirty minutes in, and not one single program, plan, or idea has even been brought up.  

Wait, here comes Africa, surely there will be some concrete suggestion to actually meet all the promises Bush has made but not fulfilled.

I urge Members of Congress to serve the interests of America by showing the compassion of America.

You... urge the members of congress to show compassion?  That's it?  In other words, no money, no ideas, no anything.  But we're sure going to feel sorry for those folks.  And with that, Africa is done.

What's next?  The Patriot Act.  Here we get a paragraph of half-truths and all-wrongs, and a conflation of the "War on Terrorism" with drug trafficking (hey, Mr. Bush, aren't you the one who said this wasn't a law enforcement action?) followed by the first real request of the evenining.

so I ask you to reauthorize the Patriot Act.

There you go, the first concrete proposal of the night is... exactly what Bush has been saying for two months.

This is followed by two paragraphs of defense of Bush's domestic spying without a warrant.  The only thing to be gleaned from these paragraphs is humor, as Bush goes through the entire program without even mentioning the words "warrant" or "domestic."

Somehow, in the twisted logic of Bush speechwriters, this program becomes a bridge to talking about the economy.  Guess what?  Bush says it's good.  So good, in fact, that the best thing we can possibly do is to do exactly what we've already done.  That, and pretend that the huge deficit doesn't exist.

Hold on.  Stop the presses.  This sounds like a proposal in the offing!

Tonight I will set out a better path -- an agenda for a Nation that competes with confidence -- an agenda that will raise standards of living and generate new jobs.

Could this be a major new policy?

Because America needs more than a temporary expansion, we need more than temporary tax relief. I urge the Congress to act responsibly, and make the tax cuts permanent.

Sorry, go back to sleep.  He didn't say anything you haven't already heard a thousand times.  This is followed by two hilarious paragraphs in which Bush tries to make his massive losses look better than the surpluses under Clinton.  Then there are a couple of punches toward Social Security and Medicare, but they're half-hearted.  Bush's fingers are still scorched from touching that third rail, and he doesn't seem in any hurry to grab it again.

After that, the speech turns into a conservative laundry list, but it's a list with no starch.  He touches on immigration reform and suggests... nothing.  He touches on health care and suggests... nothing.  

Finally, we get to energy.  Pre-speech pundits have been predicting that the heart of the speech is going to be dedicated to energy policy, so here at last, we stand a chance of encountering a little substance in a speech that so far has been lighter than whipped egg whites.

So tonight, I announce the Advanced Energy Initiative -- a 22-percent increase in clean-energy research at the Department of Energy

That's it.  That's the plan.  We're getting a speed-bump increase in the spending of research in a single government department.  This is Bush's entire plan for cutting our ties to foreign oil.

Sure, there's more talk about energy, but that's the whole plan.  At a time when America needed a new Apollo program, Bush offers us a bottle rocket.

After another lists of meaningless "encouragements" Bush closes on a note about the need for plain old "courage."

Too bad he didn't show any.