The propaganda parade known as the President's annual State of the Union address has devolved, over recent years, into a "laundry list" of issues, solutions, and miscellaneous agenda items the President claims to want to push over the next year. It has also become a time to measure just how popular the President is.Last night's speech was an exception. George W. Bush's speech was long on generalities, short on specifics, and lacking in any kind of real direction. Sure, he mentioned our "addiction" to oil, a huge departure from his earlier stand that we need more oil (what happened to the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge?). He also "proposed" a series of "initiatives" covering a wide range of ideas. But nobody truly believes he's serious about any of this.
What was most remarkable about last night's speech was the gulf separating the two major parties. George W. Bush campaigned in 2000 as someone who could bring people together. Yet he has only pushed people apart.
There were more than the usual instances where Republicans jumped up and applauded while Democrats sat still. Those instances are so staid as to seem scripted ("Hello, Senator, and welcome to the State of the Union address - here's the list of times we expect you to stand up."). The most remarkable moment of the evening, however, occurred when Bush chided the Congress for failing to pass his Social Security privatization scheme. The Democrats spontaneously rose as one and cheered.
Back when Bill Clinton was President, he made sure that Republicans as well as Democrats would be willing to applaud his ideas. Even someone as partisan as Ronald Reagan managed to accomplish this feat as well. But George W. Bush and his Republican allies either don't know how or don't care to cross the aisle. And this spells serious trouble for America.
In his speech to the Illinois state Republican convention in 1858, Abraham Lincoln said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Back then, he was talking about the divide between freedom and slavery. Today, the divide is between those who lie and those who fail to call them on their lies; it is between those who burden our children with massive debt and those who fail to stop this insanity; it is between those who grab power by any means necessary and those who seem unable to use any means to gain power.
The bad news is that nobody in power seems to be exempt from this Terrible Divide. Both sides of the aisle seem guilty of one form of rottenness or another. It is "a pox on both your houses."
The good news is that we can replace all of these people. Elections are coming soon; if enough newcomers challenge sitting incumbents, if those groups who really want change mobilize to get people to involved, by campaigning, contributing, and going to the polls on election day, then this November can mark a watershed in American politics. It can be the day on which Americans took back our government.
Only then we can heal the divide.
Copyright 2006, Dan Jacoby
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