What did I like best about last night's State of the Union? The first two words, "Madame Speaker..." Though I listen every year on NPR, I can only imagine what a difference it makes for the viewers at home to finally have a woman in one of the two chairs seated behind Bush.
The speech, unfortunately, was downright depressing. Even Bush's speech writers can't seem to give him an aura of intelligence, leadership, and dignity after 7 years in the White House. And that's flat out troubling. I recall after 9/11 listening to a broadcast of Bill Clinton speaking about the terrorist attacks and where to go from here and it was absolutely brilliant. It took my breath away, remembering the days when we had someone in the White House who was smart and ambitious, someone who worked hard and had a deep love of his job. I just don't get that from Bush...
The truth is, the state of our union is looking up. This is the last time that George W. Bush will deliver a state of the union address, and that is something. We have some mighty fine candidates for the presidency, despite the fact that none of them are talking about the elephant in the room...defense spending.
Yes, defense spending. Oh, defense spending. We wonder why our economy is in a downturn, yet we invest in outdated weapons systems and no one talks about "bloat." We are throwing billions of dollars at a war in Iraq that holds no promise to fix the political problems troubling that nation. Bush spoke last night of making tax cuts permanent and spending our tax dollars wisely, stating, "families have to balance their budgets, so should their government."
So let me get this straight: Bush wants to continue to spend, spend, spend in Iraq with no benchmarks for success, no plan for an end in sight? He threw out a few ideas for funding moderate domestic programs and aid abroad. And he wants to make the tax cuts permanent. Well where in the world will the money for all of this come from?
Answer: from our children and their children, that's where. Bush doesn't demand accountability in Iraq and no one's holding him accountable here at home either. The tax cuts he would like to make permanent have nothing to do with an economic stimulus...they don't sunset until 2010! And make no mistake: the purpose of the tax cuts is to help the wealthy, who do not need the help but may in fact have too much going on in their lives to send a check or money order back to the IRS, as Bush suggested (I won't miss his sense of humor). So he wants to reduce our revenue.
Yet he also wants to offer the appearance of compassion by increasing funding for AIDS, dispatching "armies of compassion" to the Gulf coast, leading the fight against global poverty, hunger, and disease. Oh, and he also wants peace in the Middle East.
The thing about leadership is that one faces a buffet of options and one must prioritize. The Bush priority for the last 7 years has been war. And so the state of our union is troubled as infrastructure collapses, the economy weakens, and we still haven't solved the major problems of social security, comprehensive immigration reform, public education, and making health care accessible to all (at the very least, our children).
President Bush has had 7 years to get some of these things done. He had a Republican congress for a time. He alluded to ideas that he brought forward on tough issues. The problem is, he has not exhibited the leadership to move anything forward, to create consensus, to cooperate and compromise when necessary, to get the job done. As the New York Times said this morning, "the nation yearns for leadership."
It's not that we can't be a compassionate nation, that curbs our consumerism, learns to save a few dollars, lives more sustainably, leads the world in meeting the challenges of our time, like global warming and disease, terrorism and nuclear weapons, poverty and genocide.
We have not been asked to be our best selves in a very long time. We've lacked a leader who brings people together and inspires change. We have been told that spending more money is our most urgent duty as patriotic Americans. But the truth is, we aren't as much concerned with "defending the American way of life" as we are with adapting our way of life so that the earth's fever breaks and our planet survives. We aren't so much concerned with "defending the American way of life" as we are with caring for the most vulnerable among us so that our society doesn't collapse from under us. We aren't so much concerned with "spreading democracy abroad" like some imperialistic gospel as we are with preventing genocide, closing the gap between the haves and the have nots, and empowering women in every nation to take a lead in healing the problems within their own countries.
We're a nation that wants our kids to have health coverage, a good education, a stable home. We're a nation that doesn't believe we should be building a new generation of nukes. Mostly, we're a nation that wants to be a part of the struggle against the greatest challenges of our time. We just need a leader who will take us there. I think it's safe to say we'll need to wait one more year.
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