'Politics Without Fingerprints'

http://www.americanprogress.org/site...JRJ8OVF&b=6228

STATE OF THE UNION
'Politics Without Fingerprints'

The reaction to the President's State of the Union address was nearly
unanimous: it was a political document, devoid of serious, detailed
proposals. As CBS News put it, "the rhetoric, the themes, the pre-speech
spin were all orchestrated to portray a president above politics,
fighting evil on the planet. Politics without fingerprints." The WP
notes the speech "showed just how conscious they are of the opposition's
emerging campaign themes 10 long months before Election Day." Picking up
on the defensive nature of the speech – and its brazen substitution of
politics over policy - media critic Tom Shales noted that Bush's words
"sounded like taunts - taunts to the rest of the world or taunts to
Democrats." He said, "the fact that Bush appeared to be so giddily
primed for another political slugfest was a little bit disheartening,
and even a little bit scary."

PANDERING TO THE POLLS: This year's "pre-speech spinners told us that
the address had two basic goals, to remind voters that Bush is a busy,
serious commander-in-chief making the world safe from evil-doers and to
show empathy on the domestic issues that polls show he needs help on."
The NYT pointed out the political calculations, saying "he used his
speech to sketch out what amounted to a blueprint of a two-tiered
campaign strategy that balanced compassionate appeals to swing voters on
issues like the economy, health care and education with other issues
popular with the conservative base he wants to rally." And while the
President has said he does not pay attention to polls, he actually
avoided one of his own pet projects because of poll numbers. As
CongressDaily reports, Bush "neglected to talk about his space
initiative to the moon and Mars, which has not polled well."

PANDERING TO THE RIGHT-WING: The NYT reports, "the White House was so
eager to highlight [certain] passages that the president's chief
political adviser, Karl Rove, telephoned social conservative groups on
Tuesday to make sure they would be watching the speech."

PANNED BY THE PUBLIC: Unfortunately for the President, playing to his
audience may not have worked. The numbers are in, and they show
President Bush's speech didn't go over as well with the public as
previous State of the Union addresses. According to a new WP/ABC News
poll, President Bush "deliver[ed] his State of the Union address...to an
American public that has become broadly dissatisfied with his domestic
agenda." And a Gallup-conducted, instant-response poll last night puts
it into context. The numbers are falling; only 76% of Americans watching
the speech had a favorable impression, down from 84% last year and 94%
the year before. At the same time, the percentage of Americans who felt
negatively jumped up to nearly a quarter of those watching. (Even at the
height of the Lewinsky scandal, President Clinton maintained better
State of the Union numbers than these. In 1998, Clinton had an 84%
approval rate with only a 16% negative. A year later, his speech had an
approval rate of 83% and still only received a 16% negative.)

PANNED BY THE PUNDITS: The general theme of editorials around the nation
today? The speech was weak on substance and an obvious political ploy.
Said the Arizona Republic, "If you had a sense President Bush was
speaking directly to you when he gave his State of the Union address
Tuesday night, then congratulations: You must be a Democratic candidate
for president." The Boston Globe maintained Bush had only "modest
success" at staying above the political fray: "With lines like 'America
will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our people,'
Bush was clearly sounding a campaign theme." The NYT provides two
different editorials to poke holes the speech's weaknesses, both home
and abroad.

PLAYING IN PEORIA: The NYT put its ear to the ground to hear what
average Americans were saying about the speech last night. In Florida,
where another Bush is proposing to cut taxes while cutting off 100,000
kids from Medicaid, David Shahoulian said, "We had a giant surplus when
he passed them, but all the surplus has disappeared. And now [the
President] wants to make the tax cuts permanent?" Across the country, in
the economically slammed Oregon, "where the unemployment rate was at 7.3
percent in November, the economy weighed heavily on voters interviewed."
When the President talked about economic growth, 73-year-old Richard L.
Johnston was skeptical. "You won't convince anybody in Oregon it's
better," he said. Unemployed Sam Dahan concurred: "It's been a jobless
recovery and he didn't address that in my mind...I hear that the economy
is going up, but I don't see it for me."