The State of the
Union
EDITORIAL, NYTimes on
the Web, January 24, 2007
The White House spin ahead of George
W. Bush’s seventh State of the Union address was that the president would make a
bipartisan call to revive his domestic agenda with “bold and innovative
concepts.” The problem with that was obvious last night — in six years,
Mr. Bush has shown no interest in bipartisanship, and his domestic agenda was
set years ago, with huge tax cuts for wealthy Americans and crippling debt for
the country.
Combined with the mounting cost of the war in Iraq, that makes boldness and
innovation impossible unless Mr. Bush truly changes course. And he gave no
hint of that last night. Instead, he offered up a tepid menu of ideas that
would change little: a health insurance notion that would make only a tiny
dent in a huge problem. More promises about cutting oil consumption with
barely a word about global warming. And the same lip service about
immigration reform on which he has failed to deliver.
At times, Mr. Bush sounded almost as if he’d gotten the message of the 2006
elections. “Our citizens don’t much care which side of the aisle we sit on
— as long as we are willing to cross that aisle when there is work to be done,”
he said.
But we’ve heard that from Mr. Bush before. In early 2001, he promised to
bring Americans together and instead embarked on his irresponsible tax cuts, a
divisive right-wing social agenda and a neo-conservative foreign policy that
tore up international treaties and alienated even America’s closest allies.
In the wake of 9/11, Mr. Bush had a second chance to rally the nation — and the
world — only to squander it on a pointless, catastrophic war in Iraq. Mr.
Bush promised bipartisanship after his re-election in 2004, and again after
Hurricane Katrina. Always, he failed to deliver. He did not even
mention New Orleans last night.
When Republicans controlled Congress and the White House, Mr. Bush’s only real
interest was in making their majority permanent; consultation meant telling the
Democrats what he had decided.
Neither broken promises nor failed policies changed Mr. Bush’s mind. So
the nation has been saddled with tax cuts that have turned a budget surplus into
a big deficit, education reform that has been badly managed and underfinanced,
far-right judges with scant qualifications, the dismantling of regulations in
order to benefit corporations at the expense of workers, and a triumph of
ideology over science in policy making on the environment and medical research.
All along, Americans’ civil liberties and the constitutional balance have been
trampled by a president determined to assert ever more power.
Now that the Democrats have taken Congress, Mr. Bush is acting as if he’d had
the door to compromise open all along and the Democrats had refused to walk
through it.
Last night, Mr. Bush also acted as if he were really doing something to help the
47 million people in this country who don’t have health insurance. What he
offered, by the White House’s own estimate, would take a few million off that
scandalously high number and shift the burden to the states. Mr. Bush’s
plan would put a new tax on Americans who were lucky enough to still have good
health-care coverage through their employers. Some large portion of those
are middle class and represented by the labor unions that Mr. Bush and the
Republicans are dedicated to destroying.
Mr. Bush’s comments on Iraq added nothing to his failed policies. He did,
at last, propose a permanent increase in the size of the Army and Marines that
would repair some of the damage he has done to those forces. But that
would take years, and it would do nothing to halt Iraq’s spiral. Mr. Bush
failed to explain how he would pay for a larger force, which would almost
certainly require cutting budget-busting weapons programs. That would mean
going up against the arms industry and its lobbyists — something Mr. Bush has
never been willing to do.
Mr. Bush almost certainly didn’t intend it, but his speech did reinforce one
vital political fact — that it’s not just up to him anymore. There was a
big change last night: the audience. Instead of solid Republican
majorities marching in lock step with the White House, Congress is controlled by
Democrats. It will be their task to give leadership to a nation that
desperately wants change and expects its leaders to work together to deliver it.
The Democrats’ challenge will be to form real coalitions with willing
Republicans. If they do, Mr. Bush may even be forced, finally, to
compromise.
Say what you will about the flaws and shortcomings of the two-party system.
After six years of the Bush presidency, at least we know it’s a lot better than
the one-party system.
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