What a time for George W. Bush to learn how to deliver a speech. Compared with his past performances, he was a goddamn Demosthenes during Tuesday night's State of the Union address.
That's in good part because he had more to say. Last year's State of the Union is memorable for abandoning Mars and declaring war on steroids. Now, it's the Bush agenda that's on steroids.
For one thing, the election in Iraq has finally made it possible for the president to point to a positive consequence -- however transient it may prove to be -- of his decision to go to war recklessly and wage it stupidly. Unlike past years, when Bush came before Congress insisting ridiculously that Iraq posed a mortal threat to the United States, he came before Congress and teared up as an American mother who'd lost her son embraced an Iraqi daughter who'd lost her father. The moment was not just the emotional center of the speech; it was the emotional center of his presidency, imparting to his tenure in office something it's lacked since the United States ousted the Taliban: a plausible raison d'être. (OK, provided that Iraq stabilizes, and that you overlook all that the United States has done to make that stabilization more difficult. But before last night, the administration didn't even have an image of success to which it could point.)
The moment also worked because the president had actually just broken new ground in proclaiming more of a single standard for judging autocracies. Clearly, he and his handlers learned from last month's inaugural address that it looks quite silly when you have to negate a doctrine within 24 hours, as the administration did when it was compelled to clarify that Bush's support for democracy movements didn't mean he was going to play hardball with Vladimir Putin and the Chinese. Last night he laid the groundwork for his tougher talk on Syria and Iran by criticizing Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Even if we suppose that the State of the Union was preceded by a phone call to Prince Bandar saying, “We're going after you tonight, but it's just for purposes of showing consistency,” the president still announced a more coherent democratic doctrine.
The relationship of Bush's democratic doctrine to his doctrine of preemption, however, is fuzzy at best. In the National Security Strategy of 2002, preemption was defended as the proper response to the looming dangers posed by terrorists and their state defenders. Not even Dick Cheney has argued that preemption is justified by the need to install or encourage democratic regimes. Still, Bush managed to conflate the two doctrines in his threats to Syria and Iran, though he also found it prudent to voice vaguely multilateral sentiments. Decoupling these two doctrines is a task that liberals need to undertake in the months ahead, though it's clear the United States cannot mount major military operations against either nation so long as it's bogged down in Iraq.
Still, by virtue of the success of his speech, Bush clearly bought himself a little more time from the American people for our Iraqi occupation. How long a time depends on the ongoing casualty rate of U.S. troops, the shape and character of the new Iraqi regime, and whether that regime can win and hold the allegiance of more than just the Shia population. If it can't, the occupation will be plumb out of justifications.
The emotional power of the Bush doctrine, illustrated, almost eclipsed the president's pitch to privatize Social Security. Nothing about the pitch was surprising -- not his claim that the system was “headed toward bankruptcy,” not his dwelling on private accounts rather then the cutbacks in Social Security payments, not his emphasis on previous Democratic proposals to alter the system. What surprised, and delighted, were the cries of “no!” from the Democratic side of the aisle as Bush predicted the system's coming insolvency. For a moment, Congress sounded like Parliament; for a moment, the Democrats sounded like an opposition party. The moment was so heartening it even eclipsed the relatively lame comments that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi offered later in the evening.
Indeed, after two decades during which the right waged a concerted and largely unanswered campaign to convince the American people that Social Security was bound to go belly up, it's heartening that editorials and even news stories have begun to point out that Social Security isn't really facing a crisis at all. Bush's privatization campaign is embattled even at the point of its premise, and the Democrats are rightly determined to fight this battle right there. It's not the only line of Democratic attack, but in exposing privatization as driven not by actuarial tables but by ideological and political hubris, it's a highly effective one.
On a point of personal privilege, I note that Bush promised Americans aged 55 and up that they would receive full benefits, but threw open the doors of the opportunity society to all “younger workers.” That means that if Congress were to enact Bush's program (which he took pains not to spell out last night) within the next month, I'd be exposed to the vagaries of the market; after that, I'd be a full-fledged geezer eligible for full Social Security benefits. So, memo to Congress: Take it slow, guys. Better yet, don't take it at all.
Harold Meyerson is the Prospect's editor-at-large.
