President George W. Bush delivered two State of the Union addresses last night: an unconvincing recitation of platitudes about supply-side economics followed by a compelling -- even grand -- articulation of America's role in the world. In doing so, he presented Democrats with a difficult but not unsolvable puzzle for the next two years: how to challenge head-on this president's deeply conservative domestic program while embracing, improving upon and, yes, even co-opting the best aspects of his sweeping, idealistic vision for American foreign policy.
First the disposable stuff -- and let's be honest, that's exactly what the first half of Bush's speech was. On abortion, on health care, and especially on taxes and economics, Bush recycled conservative rhetoric that dates to the 1980s, if not earlier. We're now a decade and a half removed from the end of the Reagan presidency, but the best this administration can do when it comes to tax policy is trot out supply-side clichés and claim, implausibly, that reducing taxes on the wealthiest Americans is the best way to lower the national debt. Yes, Bush threw out some moderate bones -- AIDS drugs for Africa, hydrogen-powered cars for the next generation -- and I'll be the first to agree that they sound like good ideas. But after Bush made civilian national service a major theme of last year's State of the Union only to -- having achieved little on the issue during the intervening 12 months -- relegate it to a throwaway paragraph last night, it seems legitimate to wonder whether he'll still be talking about AIDS drugs and hydrogen-powered cars one year from now.
And it wasn't just the policies of the first half of the speech that were unsatisfying -- so was the delivery, not to mention the prose itself. This was the kind of speechmaking at which President Clinton excelled; he made laundry lists of policy proposals come alive. Bush doesn't have that gift. And I don't think it is a stretch to say that in terms of laying out a thoughtful domestic agenda, he was outdone last night by Gov. Gary Locke (D-Wash.), whose rebuttal was the finest opposition response in years to a State of the Union. (Locke pulled off the difficult task of explaining -- without whining -- why Bush's programs are harming state governments, and he skillfully deployed his own family's history in arguing for the Democrats' economic agenda. In doing so, he made Rep. Dick Gephardt's (D-Mo.) response from last year look, in retrospect, like the lame display it was. Someone should take note and put Locke on the fast track to bigger and better things in the Democratic Party.)
But then came Bush's transition sentence -- "The qualities of courage and compassion that we strive for in America also determine our conduct abroad" -- and I suspect that even the president's most skeptical critics would agree that from that point on, he was masterful. As his rhetoric elevated, Bush himself appeared to grow more serious, more purposeful. Here is where I should say that, unlike many other Democrats, I support an invasion of Iraq -- preferably with support from allies but unilaterally if necessary. (I should also point out that my opinions do not represent the views of The American Prospect.) I did not need to be convinced last night, but if I had required convincing, I would have been impressed less with the specifics of the case against Saddam Hussein than with the implicit case Bush made for a benevolent American imperialism. (It wasn't quite Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff's recent ruminations in The New York Times Magazine, but it was headed in that direction.) The president's case against Hussein was strong, but his couching of war against Iraq as part of an explicit definition of America's role in the world was even stronger. This was crucial because, in the broadness of his vision, Bush rebutted convincingly the thought that has been lingering in the back of many American minds: that this war is really about the petty things -- about oil, about Bush's father, about creating international distractions from domestic failures. No, Bush said eloquently last night, it's about American strength sometimes being a last refuge of order and hope in a chaotic and unfair world. "Your enemy is not surrounding your country; your enemy is ruling your country," Bush said, addressing the Iraqi people directly in the speech's best line. "And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation." I don't know if the Iraqi people will believe (or even hear) those words. But I hope that American liberals do.
It is not irrelevant that Bush succeeded last night where Clinton had the most trouble as a speechmaker. Clinton could make a bulleted policy list sound inspiring, but when he tried to deal in broad themes and big visions, his rhetoric sometimes felt flat, even empty. The promise of a "bridge to the 21st century" as a way of describing America's future never quite spoke to the soul. And though Clinton did have overriding foreign-policy principles, he never articulated them as forcefully as Bush did last night -- probably because he never had to. I doubt that a Democrat will be able to repeat in 2004 Clinton's feat of 1992: capturing the White House without a well-articulated and thorough foreign-policy vision. Which is why the Democrats need one -- and fast.
So in the face of the Bush dichotomy -- weak on the domestic front, strong on foreign policy -- what are the Democrats to do? The first task is straightforward, and Locke made a good start last night: Hammer away at the hypocrisies and absurdities of Bush's retro economics. The second task is not so simple, however, and may even seem like a Catch-22: If the Democrats line up behind the president, they risk furthering the perception that they have no foreign policy of their own. But if they take a strong stand against the war, forget it -- they're done as a party for years to come.
The Democrats' way out is to forcefully line up behind the president's approach on Iraq but to do him one better by immediately -- and authoritatively -- beginning to talk about what comes after we depose Hussein. That has always been the weakest link in Bush's Iraq policy, and even conservative commentator David Brooks last night said he was disappointed that the president hadn't used the word "democracy" once in reference to a post-Hussein Iraq. Liberals will probably never agree completely on whether the war is a good idea, but as last night made clear, war is going to happen. The Democrats can stand awkwardly on the sidelines for the next six months or they can support this war decisively -- earning en route long-term credibility with voters and a strong voice in how the fighting and its aftermath unfold. They should start talking confidently about how to bring democracy to Iraq after Hussein; about where the formula of invasion-plus-nation-building succeeded in Afghanistan and where it needs improvement; and about how to set the stage for freedom in Iraq to ignite democratic reforms in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. If they do this, they can rescue themselves from irrelevancy on foreign policy. But much more importantly, they can help America get the coming war right.
Richard Just is the editor of The American Prospect Online.
