State of the Union speech.
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| Tue, 01-20-2004 - 8:48am |
In his State of the Union speech to Congress on Tuesday evening, President Bush will in effect launch his campaign to be re-elected.
He will try to present the strengths of his administration but he will also have to address its weaknesses.
Mr Bush does not yet know which Democrat he will face. Iowa is only the start of the campaign. So he has to adopt a broad strategy.
His strengths lie in foreign fields - in the "war on terror" which he himself declared and in the assertion of the "Bush doctrine" of pre-emptive intervention.
One of his major themes this year will be that America is safer with him at the helm.
New focus
But the tone in this speech may be moderated. He is mindful that he may need to sound more flexible in how his policy is applied.
Take Iraq. It has not gone as well as he had hoped so he might emphasise the chance that Iraq now has to develop democracy rather than dwell on the removal of a doubtful threat from weapons of mass destruction.
According to The New York Times, he will single out Libya as an example of how pressure on a rogue state can force it to change course without war.
Libya has agreed to give up work on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and to allow full inspections.
By emphasising that Libya has been brought to negotiation not to war, Mr Bush will reach out to those Americans (and his critics around the world) who worry that his policies are too aggressive.
The phrase "axis of evil" first used in this speech two years ago (but dropped last year) is not expected to make a come-back.
Foreign policy, however, is the lesser of his worries.
Domestic vulnerability
A poll published by the Washington Post and ABC News has revealed that it is domestic policy which is his weakness, even though overall support for him is put at 58%.
He is ahead of the Democrats by 2 to1 over policies connected to national security, but he is running statistically even with them on other issues.
He has tried to remedy this in recent weeks and months, promoting, for example, policies to give prescription drugs for the elderly and legalising the presence of illegal immigrants.
The immigration initiative appeals to the Latino vote while not upsetting Middle America too much. The country has always coped with and has indeed been built on waves of immigrants who provide much needed labour.
So the speech will have to dwell in substantial part on the economic and social state of the union.
The rapid growth of the US economy (and the role in this he will claim for his tax cuts) will no doubt feature strongly.
But always at Mr Bush's back is the memory of what happened to his father.
He, too, won a war against Iraq but lost office after neglecting the economy.



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It's the CIA's fault...It's Clinton's fault... An op-ed in the WSJ today has the nerve to suggest that WMD were never the point to begin with. (?!) It's a good thing the Bush administration doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks, because our credibility is completely shot now. Zero. Nada.
Gettingahandle
Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.
To be fair, Hussein was aggressive enough to use them.
My experience tells me that when something looks "simple" it usually isn't. I am not all impressed by Kay, the more he talks the more I wonder.
Who knows. We may never know the actual truth about what actually happened to the weapons that he (Hussein) did supposedly have, unless he tells us what happened to them, and I dont think that is too likely.
I do have one question though. If the Syrian Gov't is supposedly willing to "work" with the coallition, why do they have their nickers in a twist about allowing inspectors to come in to look for evidence of Iraq's WMD program, which are supposedly hidden in their country? Makes me wonder.....
>"And it's so well watched because New Hampshire is the first primary and has a habit not of picking the man who will eventually be president but of killing off candidates who seem to be in the polls very likely contenders.
In 2000 the valiant naval hero John McCain handsomely defeated George W Bush but you know who won in November.
The president's State of the Union address used to be a fair, often blunt, account of where the country stood in both foreign and domestic policy.
In the last 20 years, I'd say, it's become a visionary description of how close the country has come to Utopia.
Mr Bush's speech was no exception. It was a hymn to the greatness and goodness of America. He used the word America 60 times.
No mention of Bin Laden, the Taleban, balancing the budget, the country's huge debt, nor ever the two words that many people here and abroad think are together the root cause of both the invasion of Iraq and the worldwide war on terrorism.
Those words are Israel and Palestine.
Mr Bush gave us no bad news. His address could very aptly have been recited against a muted chorus of Onward Christian Soldiers."<
Quote from op-ed..........
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/letter_from_america/3429883.stm
cl-Libraone

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