An Open Letter to President Bush

Mr. President:

The rite of custom brings you to the Congress each year for an address on the State of our Union. The rite of custom brings you to the Congress, but the unfortunate rite of linguistic custom demanded a change from the prepared mention of "the Democratic majority" to the spoken "Democrat majority." Senator McCarthy's favored pejorative endures, even from beyond the grave.

The impression I get from many elected officials - that politics is becoming more about the person rather than the party - is a nice idea, and your calls for bipartisanship are admirable. The response will be just as open as the doors you opened with your speech tonight for a way forward on your priority issues. However, I feel as if you must commit to bipartisanship as much as you wish the Democratic party would. This is not a case in which you request bipartisanship and then dig in your heels for only what you want. The onus for a way forward lies with you and your caucus.

Your bullishness on the economy is not unreasonable but I feel it is essentially unfounded. Unemployment is low, yes, but inflation is still a little weird, growth has slowed down, and wages are stagnant. The "not with more government, but with more enterprise" line is a total slam against the minimum wage increase, and a cowardly way to do it. Saying that we need a balanced budget is all well and good - you maybe should have thought about this and spending discipline before failed foreign policy saddled our country with generational debt. The budget proposals you intend to submit will no doubt "restrain the spending appetite of the federal government" by cutting social programs. This does not do "big things" for our country. The only thing big about this practice is the gap between classes that gets bigger every year.

The fact that you rolled out saving Social Security is indicative of the rest of your tenure. The fact that you continue to beat dead policy horses until there's nothing left is not surprising, but unless you go to the mat with some serious bipartisan concessions, Social Security reform is once again going nowhere, and rightly so, as there is nothing really wrong with it in the first place. As for No Child Left Behind and your education remarks, the idea that the deletion of a program that patently doesn't work is "backsliding" rather than reform is ridiculous. It is not surprising, but it is ridiculous. Educators profess that your program doesn't work, and in this case I am inclined to agree that less government is better: educators know better than the federal government what works in their field.

Everyone stands up for health care, and you correctly identified it as a priority, but the details get tricky. The idea that government has obligations only to poor children, the elderly, and the infirm is an argument against a responsible society. I'm not sure where politicians got the idea that a tax break on something makes it more immediately accessible, but everyone I know that lives hand to mouth don't have the ability to make a basic structural change to their monthly income to start paying premiums. These are people that work, and work hard. The idea that one can suddenly begin paying health insurance premiums at today's rates is not bound in any way to reality. Further, the idea that health savings accounts or medical liability reform will do anything to advance the cause of meeting America's health care needs is wrong. Those things have nothing to do with one another. Assuming that an American citizen who can't afford insurance premiums would be able to save enough to pay for health care - likely only sought in catastrophic situations, out of financial necessity - is totally divorced from every day life.

Your immigration remarks failed to excite many people in the chamber, but I sympathize that this is a complex issue. I'm not sure how you resolve the status of illegal immigrants already in the US without animosity or amnesty. I'm waiting to see what other policy options there are, and how you intend to handle the bureaucratic load while being revenue-neutral, I guess, because we aren't in the business of raising taxes to pay for anything that comes up, like war or immigration.

On energy: Mr. President, I have been watching your give these speeches for years, and I have often heard you mention energy independence. Tonight you mentioned it again, and championed technology as the answer. Coal isn't really the answer, but as soon as you're willing to roll out the grants and tax breaks for embracing alternative energy like electric cars, wind energy and solar power, we're ready to embrace them. And when I say that, I mean real tax breaks and grants, not ten million dollars to research bio-diesel. You can't research anything with ten million dollars, especially not something that would produce a wholesale reduction of dependence on foreign oil.

And further, you state that America will gather and keep more oil. I still don't understand how living our lives less dependent on oil through technology equals more oil. How does that work? Without being flippant, I am honestly curious how our dependence on foreign oil can be lessened without likewise chipping away at our dependence on oil, period.

Finally, to the war on terror: How has the question been settled that to win the war on terror we must take the fight to the enemy? How can you base foreign policy and military engagement practices on proving a negative, on saying "We don't know what didn't happen, but aren't you glad it didn't?" Even as I dedicate a better part of my life - my personal and professional life - to understanding the root causes of terrorism, and learning how to best defend our country against it, I understand that terrorists will not defeat the West. It will not be a leader of al-Qaeda or Hizbullah that brings an end to the United States. To describe terrorism in a state address or in any case at all as a monolithic evil with a single, malevolent ideology - to describe it as an entity that can be quantifiably defeated - is irresponsible.

"The enemy" is something to which we cannot put a face or a name, it is not an individual, it is not a nation. The enemy is a social force that must be combated, but cannot be fought in a way that may be politically reified. Unfortunately for you and the rest of the Straussian ideologues that encouraged the War In Iraq, it is nothing upon which sensible government, foreign policy, or public service can be based. Terrorism is a very real threat that must be addressed; terrorist groups must be sought out, deterred, and eradicated; but terrorism is not a man you can strike, and it is not a problem that can be solved by bullets alone.

To say that "...it would not be like us to leave our promises unkept" is an inaccurate description of the situation in Iraq. It is also not like the best idea of America to commit to total war in a way that makes little sense, or to continually apply overwhelming resources to a strategy that is inarguably a failure. Nor is it "like us" as a nation to forget the lessons we learn as soon as we learn them. Yet your administration and the former Republican majority did all of those things again and again, from in fact failing to keep promises with rigid regularity. Thus far, nothing has prevented you from pursuing diplomacy as a greater or preferred strategy in the Middle East or in Iraq, as many have suggested might be a complimentary tactic. The lessons learned from history, both recent and more distant, are as quickly forgotten today as they have been each year since the turn of the century.

You say that "...nothing is more important than for us to succeed in the Middle East." If this is in fact the case, the actions of your government are out of line with our highest priority. Your singling out of Hizbullah in tonight's speech and your equivocation of them with al-Qaeda is an incremental affirmation of what I suspect is an intention to level force against Iran. If I am mistaken, I am glad for it. Further, your equivocation of Shi'a and Sunni militant groups seemed linguistically aimless, and I wonder what you intended to signify by way of those statements. Anyone paying attention should be appalled at the suggestion that demanding a discussion on foreign policy and the use of force does not support the troops. It is an old argument, but it simply will not die. Does support for our armed forces come only at the expense of their resources, their health, or their lives in a blind, knock-kneed run for a finish line that does not exist, and indeed never has existed? I would argue, Mr. Bush, that it does not. I would argue that support for our armed forces is readily found in abundant supply within other policy paths and strategies, and that while you request the time for your new strategy to work, the expiration of time pleaded for in the case of every other step along the way goes unnoticed.