Today’s the day when every political blogger will be dissecting the State of the Union address. The fact is, that is pretty much a “preach to the choir” exercise. If you are a Republican, you’ll belabor the point that the Big Guy hit all the right notes. He addressed the issues of war, the economy, energy, education and even the pseudo-scandals of the day. No doubt about it. The man was on fire.
If you’re a Democrat, you’ll point out the scandals, the attempts to justify a bad foreign policy, the grasping at motherhood/apple-pie issues like those nasty old internal combustion engines we all love, and the attempt to impose a socially conservative agenda on the nation’s failing schools. No doubt about it. The man was floundering.
Well, you all should know where I sit on the issues. I watched and was surprised at the lack of the usual (at least as we came to expect during the Clinton years) litany of almost-accomplishments. We didn’t hear all that much beyond a brief nod to emerging democracy around the world, a booming stock market, low unemployment, stable interest rates, and the outcome of lowering taxes on our general prosperity. We did get some honest appraisal of failures in things like the Palestinian elections, the constraint of Iran’s nuclear aspirations, the response to natural disasters, and even influence peddling in Congress. The candor, at least to me, seemed refreshing.
I don’t agree with all of the proposals. While I definitely want to stay the course in Iraq, support Israel against Hamas, and deny Iran nuclear weapons, I’m not in favor of some of the domestic suggestions. Just as when Bill Clinton got 100,000 cops enacted into law, the proposal to hire 70,000 science and math teachers isn’t going to do much. Spread that seemingly large number across the nation and you get much less than one teacher per school. Worst of all you increase the amount of federal capacity to interfere in that which is and should be a function of the states.
I don’t think we can realistically over any foreseeable short term wean ourselves from oil. Let’s admit that we have some foreign dependency, but it is by choice, not necessity. We can develop proven reserves in the Gulf, in Alaska, in California, and in Texas. We can develop refining infrastructure to cope with increasing demands. We can exploit oil shale resources with new technologies. We should develop alternative energy sources, but it isn’t wind and sunshine that we need. It’s nuclear power generation. At least that’s my opinion.
But, what really astonished me this morning while perusing the daily fishwrapper, was the appearance of that left-wing side-show, Cindy Sheehan on page three. Yep, there was old Cindy, being ejected from the House chamber because of…drumroll, here…violating the published and agreed to rules of decorum. C’mon, she’s worn out the grieving mother thing already. She isn’t the first to lose a son in a war she didn’t understand. She isn’t even the first to become a public figure for her anti-war stance. She isn’t a lot of things.
She clearly isn’t the sharpest knife in the international relations drawer. She isn’t the most disciplined, well-reasoned or rational of debaters. She isn’t very well grounded in issues, but she certainly is a bundle of emotional appeals and guerilla theater. And, apparently, she isn’t very fashion conscious. Who would seriously attend an event such as a joint-session of Congress wearing a T-shirt—particularly one with a questionable political message on it?
That’s why I loved this fairly extended opinion piece by James Taranto: This Guy Gets It
He points out a lot of things worth considering, ranging from media mis-reporting to Ms Sheehan’s non-issues to the Valerie Plame brouhaha. It takes a lot of facts to convince folks that the mainstream media has veered a long way from reporting in America. How, indeed, does Cindy Sheehan become “the story”?
The more important question, however, is the very basic one: Why does the media want so much to see America defeated, embarrassed and destroyed?
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