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Defining Hour
Weakness of Putsch regime shows as he staggers through SOTU 07
© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
1/23/07
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Politics/sotu07.htm
It probably didn’t cheer anyone in the West Wing up when the CBS poll came
out three days before the State of the Union address showing that his approval
ratings had dropped to 28% – a number not seen in such polls since the last week
of the Nixon presidency.
A relatively popular president can rally voters through the SOTU and get a bump
in the polls. Clinton used it to devastating effect in 1998 in the days
following the Lewinsky scandal, when Republicans were wondering if he should
even give the speech at all, since his presidency was clearly over. In that
speech, the popular Clinton rallied supporters and addressed critics through
sheer intelligence and charisma. That SOTU probably saved his Presidency.
Despite the best efforts of the GOP hatchetmen and the slime masquerading as
journalists at Faux, his popularity never dropped below 62%.
But the cruel irony of being an unpopular president lies in the fact that people
usually don’t bother watching a windy and largely content-free speech by a
president they don’t like. Hell, I just watched it in hopes of gleaning enough
to write a funny column. The next thousand words will reveal whether it worked.
In the meantime, I realize that I may have been the only person in my county who
watched the speech. No, I don’t want your pity. Just send money.
An unpopular president can’t rally the troops because the troops aren’t there to
be rallied.
Normally, a president gets support when there is a sense of national crisis.
When that breaks down, of course, is when the public comes to believe that the
national crisis is, in fact, the president himself. Nixon discovered this in
1974, as did Hoover in 1932.
So it didn’t matter how much he humped Pelosi’s leg in hopes of political
mileage stemming from some condescending “you’ve come a long way, baby” kinds of
remarks. It didn’t matter how many subway heroes he applauded, or how many
basketball stars he called “son of the Congo.” His performance had all the hope
and relevance of a trout flopping around in the bottom of a boat.
There were a lot of things he didn’t talk about. For example, he didn’t talk
about the 100 hours of legislation that Pelosi successfully ran through the
House in just 87 hours. The closest he came was when he discussed earmarks and,
sounding like he had just thought of it, suggested the House expose all earmarks
to the light of day. The annual number of earmarks had exploded three-fold in
the previous six years, but it took a Democratic takeover of Congress and
legislation exposing earmarks to the light of day to make Putsch decide that
something needed to be done about them.
The first comic highlight came when it came to health coverage, one of those
social necessities that wealthy Republicans like Putsch like to sniff and
dismiss as “entitlements.” Putsch wants to make the first $7,500 of income tax
exempt if the worker has health insurance. Since much of that money is ALREADY
exempt, this means that the worker is promised he’ll get $200 of his own money
back if he shells out $4,500 a year to an insurance company which will then use
the money to figure out ways of screwing said worker out of his coverage. Putsch
forgot to mention the millions of people who can’t get health insurance because
they just don’t look very profitable to the insurance company.
Somehow I don’t think garment workers are going to be throwing spontaneous “We
love the President” parties at work tomorrow.
Just to add to the general sense of lunacy, Putsch pretended that the typical
worker who needed health insurance made $60, 000 a year, and so would save quite
a bit. Like, about $4,500 a year.
Somehow, I suspect that most of the low-end workers who don’t have health
insurance make less than $60,000 a year. In fact, I bet all of them do. Quite a
bit less, in most cases.
From there he sequed into immigration worker reform, which was a bit
unfortunate, since his party is crammed with xenophobes who routinely scream
that the reason health care in America is such a disaster is because illegal
aliens suck it all down. Republicans sat on their hands for that, while the
Democrats offered tepid applause. Putsch then took a few stabs at alternative
fuels, praising ethanol and suggesting that America go green and
energy-efficient while Cheney sat behind him and smiled around the chamber with
a “ain’t-NEVER-gonna-happen!” smirk on his face.
From there, Putsch got to Iraq. There isn’t any way of polishing that particular
turd, and Putsch inadvertently revealed an inner truth in the situation when he
said, “Our success in this war is often measured by the things that did not
happen.” That’s one way of saying you got your ass kicked, George. Admitting
there is a problem is the first step.
A few moments later he said, “Our enemies are quite explicit about their
intentions. They want to overthrow moderate governments, and establish safe
havens from which to plan and carry out new attacks on our country.” I’m sure
quite a few people were wondering if he was talking about al Qaida, or Project
for a New American Century.
This lead to his second inadvertent truth of the night: “The result was a tragic
escalation of sectarian rage and reprisal that continues to this day. This is
not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we're in. Every one of us
wishes this war were over and won.”
Oh, yeah, baby. Glad you figured it out before anyone got hurt.
He then led a stentorian call to “victory!!”, which got him a few half-hearted
claps from Joe Lieberman and the surviving Republicans sitting to Putsch’s left.
SOTUs aren’t noted for content or sincerity, but it’s entirely possible that not
one person in that building believed that Putsch would lead America to any sort
of victory in Iraq, including Putsch himself. “Defining hour,” incidentally, is
the latest Putsch-speak for “Stay the course.”
He then did something very strange. He proposed privatizing a national guard. “A
second task we can take on together is to design and establish a volunteer
Civilian Reserve Corps. Such a corps would function much like our military
reserve. It would ease the burden on the Armed Forces by allowing us to hire
civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs
them. It would give people across America who do not wear the uniform a chance
to serve in the defining struggle of our time.”
Yeah, privatizing the help has helped military morale so much. Generals really
appreciate it when the guy who cleans their office at night makes more than they
do. Privatizing the reserves with the same sort of people who work for KBR or
Halliburton should really improve the mood among the troops.
That was pretty much it for the speech, notable only for the lack of enthusiasm
shown by House members and the fact that few people were watching. “See you next
year,” Putsch gamely concluded, but, like his call to victory moments earlier,
it was possible that not a single person in that room believed that.
The Democrats picked Jim Webb of Virginia to give the Democratic response. Short
and sweet, and rather than comment upon it, I’ll just finish this essay by
including it here:
I'm Sen. Jim Webb, from Virginia, where this year we will celebrate the 400th
anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown _ an event that marked the first step
in the long journey that has made us the greatest and most prosperous nation on
earth.
It would not be possible in this short amount of time to actually rebut the
president's message, nor would it be useful. Let me simply say that we in the
Democratic Party hope that this administration is serious about improving
education and health care for all Americans, and addressing such domestic
priorities as restoring the vitality of New Orleans.
Further, this is the seventh time the president has mentioned energy
independence in his State of the Union message, but for the first time this
exchange is taking place in a Congress led by the Democratic Party. We are
looking for affirmative solutions that will strengthen our nation by freeing us
from our dependence on foreign oil, and spurring a wave of entrepreneurial
growth in the form of alternate energy programs. We look forward to working with
the president and his party to bring about these changes.
There are two areas where our respective parties have largely stood in
contradiction, and I want to take a few minutes to address them tonight. The
first relates to how we see the health of our economy _ how we measure it, and
how we ensure that its benefits are properly shared among all Americans. The
second regards our foreign policy _ how we might bring the war in Iraq
to a proper conclusion that will also allow us to continue to fight the war
against international terrorism, and to address other strategic concerns that
our country faces around the world.
When one looks at the health of our economy, it's almost as if we are living in
two different countries. Some say that things have never been better. The stock
market is at an all-time high, and so are corporate profits. But these benefits
are not being fairly shared. When I graduated from college, the average
corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker did; today, it's
nearly 400 times. In other words, it takes the average worker more than a year
to make the money that his or her boss makes in one day.
Wages and salaries for our workers are at all-time lows as a percentage of
national wealth, even though the productivity of American workers is the highest
in the world. Medical costs have skyrocketed. College tuition rates are off the
charts. Our manufacturing base is being dismantled and sent overseas. Good
American jobs are being sent along with them.
In short, the middle class of this country, our historic backbone and our best
hope for a strong society in the future, is losing its place at the table. Our
workers know this, through painful experience. Our white-collar professionals
are beginning to understand it, as their jobs start
disappearing also. And they expect, rightly, that in this age of globalization,
their government has a duty to insist that their concerns be dealt with fairly
in the international marketplace.