What might we expect from tonight’s State of the Union address?
Besides tortured logic and tortured delivery, that is?
Well, surely Bush’s speech-writers will turn to their patron saint of jaw-dropping bamboozlement, Ronald Reagan, for inspiration, so, for fun, let’s recall what Reagan did with his last pirouette upon the Congressional stage (after the jump).
The 1988 State of the Union
In Reagan’s last State of the Union, he started by insisting that he would not recount his Administration’s accomplishments (chief among which, in an honest accounting, would have been record-breaking corruption) because he was "still on the job." Therefore, he wanted to be forward-looking.
He then praised bipartisanship – a dynamic and visionary concept, even then – and asked for "a new beginning" with Congress.
Presumably a new beginning of sorts was needed after all that unpleasantness around Congress trying to investigate illegal Iran-Contra activity, and so many witnesses over-exerting themselves with their repetition of the phrase "Senator, I don't recall."
After this opening olive branch, Reagan then proceeded to pummel the legislative branch as a bunch of spendthrift incompetent wimps (using weighty budget documents as props), and to flack a right-wing agenda of school prayer, free trade agreements (no questions allowed), and swift confirmation of the zombie wing-nuts he was trying to pack into the courts.
He decried our "59 welfare programs" and soaring deficits (helpfully setting the agenda for the Clinton Administration).
Oh – and he declared victory in the War on Drugs (thank goodness!).
Reagan also, famously, compared the Nicaraguan contras to the founding fathers of the United States -- probably the most famous part of the speech. (And maybe they were similar, give or take a little nun-raping). In the same paragraph Reagan raised the ridiculous bogeyman of Sandinista "plans for a large 600,000-man army." Proportionally, this would be like the US having a 40,000,000 person army (which, come to think of it, probably was Weinberger’s original proposal).
Reagan also professed his undying allegiance to Al Qaeda the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan – just one wave in the "swelling freedom tide" sweeping the world.
Tonight we’ll no-doubt hear how its continuing to "sweep" Iraq.
He, of course, finished with his classic optimism routine, honed over the course of 25 years as the bolt-on would-be antidote to all the toxic proposals that came earlier in his speeches:
At the start of this decade, I suggested that we lived in equally momentous times -- that it is up to us now to decide whether our form of government would endure and whether history still had a place of greatness for a quiet, pleasant, greening land called America. Not everything has been made perfect in seven years -- nor will it be made perfect in seven times 70 years --but before us, this year and beyond, are great prospects for the cause of peace and world freedom.
It means, too, that the young Americans I spoke of seven years ago, as well as those who might be coming along the Virginia or Maryland shores this night and seeing for the first time the lights of this capital city, the lights that cast their glow on our great halls of government and the monuments to the memory of our great men -- it means those young Americans will find a city of hope in a land that is free. We can be proud that for them and for us as those lights along the Potomac are still seen this night -- signaling, as they have for nearly two centuries and as we pray God they always will, that another generation of Americans has protected and passed on lovingly this place called America, this shining city on a hill, this government of, by, and for the people.
[Cue: soft sighs]
Even Presidents who commit impeachable offenses are still free to quote Abraham Lincoln with impunity -- that's how great our nation is.
What continues to be striking, re-reading Reagan speeches, is how even 20 years later, the United States has never really begun to process the gaping canyon between the soaring rhetoric of his speech-writers, and the vicious and devastating realities of his agenda.
When Reagan started, the United States still had family farms and lots of middle-class manufacturing jobs – like they still have in Europe. By the end of his terms, we had full-fledged class-warfare – with the working class, itself, hypnotized into an electoral circular firing squad, bitterly divided by race, region, and religion.
Right-wing con men argue that Bush just mis-executed Reaganism. In truth, we’re fundamentally boxed in to our current policies and politics until Democratic leaders convince people that it was Reaganism, itself, that was -- and continues to be -- the real poison: from the world historic debacle in Iraq (taking on fake bogeymen -- and creating real ones -- in high-Reagan style) to the home-mortgage con of the century (a direct result of blind deregulation).
So what’s in store tonight?
Bush will no doubt echo Reagan’s structure and themes -- and will probably have a pretty good time (should be a great after-party).
Bush came to Capitol Hill last year after a bruising election – and fell into the warm embrace of the new Democratic majority. The speech came across as a veritable love-fest, with 58 ovations – 28 of them standing.
The event set the tone for a year where Democratic leaders were consistently out-witted, while accomplishing little and squandering much – some polls show that Congress is even less popular now than Bush. Needless to say, the effort to really hold the Administration accountable for the tide of misguided policy, incompetence, corruption, and outright illegality – you know, the reason they were sent to Washington - was, and continues to be, a joke. (Remember all the paeans to subpoena power?)
To be fair, Dems may have knocked a few hundred thousand dollars off of Karl Rove’s book deal.
If last year's event was the first date, so to speak, and if it went so well for Bush when it might have been so awkward – well, given the character of Bush, and the character of the Democratic leadership, one hesitates to speculate what might happen on the second date. Hopefully the presence of TV cameras and vestigial norms around modesty will prevent the worst.
Even so, given the recent dynamics around Congressional capitulation on the "stimulus" package – a classic situation where Democratic leaders unambiguously held much better cards, and promptly squandered them in short order in the name of that most glorious of phenomena – "bipartisanship" (which, as we saw, was one of Ronald Reagan's great ideas for 1988) – I believe the event will be next to unbearable.