The State of the State of the Union

A tiny story on MSNBC reveals Bush's five points for the State of the Union: the war on terror, energy, health care, immigration and education. Conspicuously absent is a focus on Iraq.

Bush may already feel as if he covered that with the speech on the surge from last week. The State of the Union, during Bush's tenure in office, has contained everything from phrases that became cultural cornerstones (the Axis of Evil) to weird promises that were never revisited after the speech (stopping man - animal hybrids) to failed policy initiatives (Social Security reform) to outright lies (about how Hussein and Osama were best friends forever). However, as it is the most salient point in national politics at the moment, to avoid throwing in at least a couple of good paragraphs about Iraq is a mistake.

Not only does it ignore what the electorate is most interested in, it glosses over past transgressions in favor of discussing things that Democrats now control the agenda on, in an effort to play nice. This is not politically dumb in that it signals to everyone that he wants to work together. The problems with that sentiment are that he's already threatening to veto things and that a great chunk of his party is abandoning him for higher ground, meaning that his positions on a great many things are irrelevant, and that he would be irrelevant if not for the aforementioned veto pen.

The State of the Union is more or less required by Article II of the Constitution. It used the Speech from the Throne as a model and serves as a president's opportunity to offer guidance to Congress, insight to his policy ambitions, and now in the mass media age, to communicate with and inspire the people whom he governs. In the last several years, it has usually served as a pulpit from which broad proclamations and generalities are espoused.

Until now, the minority party would point out the fallacy in those generalities without gaining much traction. Now that Democrats have the majority, the response will be more important. It will signal the first real diplomatic exchange between an administration that seems to be grabbing at concessions to avoid trouble and a Congress eager to govern as much on what should be done as on what has happened but shouldn't have.