In case you were wondering about what I thought of last night’s State of the Union address, I wasn’t surprised: it was a rambling, semi-coherent wish list. I also thought it was Bush’s best SotU to date, damning with faint praise if ever there was.
As to specific reactions I hope to do some posts in full analyzing individual proposals and sections of the address. I thought that the arguments he made on Iraq were actually an argument for maintaining a substantial troop commitment there indefinitely which probably wasn’t his intent.
As to the much bally-hooed proposal on healthcare reform, although ABC’s Charlie Gibson was correct in noting what a sea-change such a proposal would constitute if enacted, I thought that Barack Obama’s hipshot reaction was 100% correct: the proposal does little to address the problem of the high costs of healthcare. In my view healthcare insurance is a red herring: the real problem we have is that healthcare costs too much. With lower costs (and some subsidizing of the expenses of people who are genuinely in need) everything that the critics of our present system want become possible. Without lower costs everything that most of us might want from a healthcare system will withdraw beyond our reach.
I thought the new Democratic majority was quite gracious, as I expected. However, it’s a natural human reaction when you find a course of action that works for you to continue doing it. Opposition to the president has been working pretty well for Democrats so far, I expect them to continue doing it, and there were plenty of signs in the after-speech reactions, both prepared and off-the-cuff, that would be the case.
I think that, probably unfortunately for us all, Mr. Bush is really and truly a lame-duck president and little that was said last night will be remembered or enacted.
