Bush's Last Hurrah

Senator John McCain, busy pressing his campaign in Florida, didn't bother to show up. The Wall Street Journal reported the speech on page 3. The New York Times relegated the full text to its website. TV chatter focused more on Senator Edward Kennedy's stirring Camelot embrace of Barack Obama earlier that day than George W. Bush's proposals in what was, blessedly, his last State of the Union address. What happens when a President gives a State of the Union speech and nobody listens?

But we must pay attention to the damage Bush has wrought. As he delivered his seventh State of the Union, we're mired in two bloody and endless occupations; our economy is cratering; dangers facing the world--from global warming to economic instability to terrorism--are much worse than they were seven years ago. America is more indebted, more isolated and more unequal. Our economy is weaker, our military is near broken, our people are divided.

Instead of forthrightly facing these problems Bush, unsurprisingly, resorted to duck and cover. "From expanding opportunity to protecting our country, we've made good progress," he averred. "Yet we have unfinished business." We can "be confident about our economic growth" in the long run, he said, despite the current "period of uncertainty."

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