It's funny how politics have imitated sports in the last week.
Perhaps you turned on a station from the ESPN family during that time. If you did, there is a decent chance you were greeted by one of NFL Films' Super Bowl highlight shows — those wonderfully retro 30-minute montages of sports' biggest event featuring the hyperbolic, metaphorical narration of John Facenda accompanied by the triumphant, rollicking soundtrack.
Or perhaps you tired of watching those (something that, at least for me, never happens) and instead tuned into one of the cable news stations. There you would have had a hard time escaping some talking head opining and speculating about what President George W. Bush would say or needed to say during the annual State of the Union Address before Congress.
No matter which you were watching, you were really viewing the same thing. Sure, Mr. Facenda's majestic odes to Pittsburgh's 1970s Steel-Curtain Defense were replaced by Bill O'Reilly's tributes to Mr. Bush's Department of Defense, but it still boiled down to this: a bunch of hype over something that usually fails to live up to expectations.
Between those highlight films, 24-7 commentary and "media day," the Super Bowl is easily the most hyped event on the sports calendar, despite the fact the game itself is often lopsided and uninteresting. (And, yes, I realize several of the games in the last decade have been truly excellent. Patriots vs. Rams? Absolutely classic. But I still consider the axiom of the Super Bowl being disappointing to be true, even if that theory is approaching its deathbed.)
Similarly, the State of the Union Address is, at least under normal circumstances, the most highly anticipated and widely viewed speech the president delivers throughout the entire year.
And yet it's almost always devoid of anything approaching substance. The president will detail his policy objectives — usually revealed well in advance — while members of his own party stand up and applaud approximately once every 10 seconds as members of the opposition party curl their brows at twice that rate.
It's really nothing more than a spectacle — from the long, handshake-filled entrance of the president to the language of the speech that always manages to project optimism and direction without ever delving into specifics.
Add it up and the speech amounts to a snooze-fest that even Tom Brady couldn't make compelling — although I guess he did try in 2004 as a member of First Lady Laura Bush's guest list.
I'd go so far as to advocate scrapping the whole ordeal, or at least I would if it wasn't for that one pesky sentence in Article II of the Constitution.
Yet despite the limitations and pitfalls inherent in the event, President Bush was able to deliver a quietly effective speech Tuesday. Don't get me wrong — he did not outline a tremendous amount in the way of new policy stances, and it won't go down as one of the more memorable speeches he's ever given — but based on what he said and the way he delivered it, Mr. Bush signaled 2006 may just be the year the president rebounds from his post-election doldrums.
And so, in the spirit of the upcoming big game, allow me to break down Mr. Bush's speech scouting report style:
Offense: Watching clips from Mr. Bush's 2003 address on CNN the other day, I was amazed at how dark the president's hair was. Then again, anyone would likely spout a few grey hairs if they endured what the president has in the last couple of years: a bitterly contested election, key domestic policy failures, the Valarie Plame affair and Katrina, to name a few significant disappointments. Despite those failures, I was pleasantly surprised to see Mr. Bush continue his push for overhauling the Social Security system, which had been assumed to be on the backburner of the domestic agenda.
As the president deftly pointed out, the first baby boomers turn 60 this year. That fact alone should compel the Democrats — and their selfish, shortsighted friends at AARP — to look at the issue seriously, something they failed to do last year. The facts here bode horribly for our generation: Social Security will start losing money in little more than a decade, and by the early 2040's — before we'll be eligible for benefits — the system will be bankrupt. That means either a loss in benefits or huge tax increases. Or, of course, the country could turn to personal accounts, the clear answer to saving Social Security from its impending financial morass by earning a far better return on the money that currently goes into the system.
It is highly encouraging to see the president intends to keep fighting for this despite the way in which his proposal flamed out last year. He also scored points Tuesday for adding some bite to his concerns over Iran's nuclear program.
Defense: Mr. Bush has taken quite a beating in the past month over the National Security Agency's domestic wiretapping program. In what was the high point of his speech, Mr. Bush vigorously defended this program so vital to America's security interests. The validity of the program really hinges on the same argument for the Patriot Act — this is wartime. In times of peace, neither is necessary nor desirable. But two of the Sept. 11 hijackers "placed telephone calls to al Qaeda operatives overseas," Bush said, highlighting the deficiencies of a strong foreign intelligence operation if domestic intelligence is lacking. Privacy does have to concede some ground — although not a lot — when the country is at war. It's also ironic to note the immense firestorm from Congress over the program in the last month, despite the fact certain members of that body, as Mr. Bush noted Tuesday, knew of the wiretapping before the New York Times broke the story. Sit down Harry Reid.
Special teams: Sadly, Mr. Bush largely chose to punt on the issue of ethics reforms. He did briefly address pork-barrel spending reform — a suggestion that excited Sen. John McCain so much he could barely contain himself — but where was any mention of lobbying reform? Where were the suggestions to strictly limit what a lobbyist can give to elected officials? And given the enormity of the Jack Abramoff scandal in the last few weeks, why did Mr. Bush devote a mere two sentences to the issue?
Earmarks do need to be addressed. But there's still much more that needs to be reformed: private gifts and travel expenses covered by lobbyists, the length of time a legislator must wait before becoming a lobbyist and more disclosure in the whole process. Mr. Bush should have addressed these.
And the status of his effort to halve the federal deficit by 2009, unfortunately, appears to still be sailing along the path of Mike's Vanderjagt's last field goal attempt. With only modest attempts at reducing federal spending, coupled with permanent tax cuts and several new spending initiatives like the American Competitiveness Initiative, one really has to wonder the feasibility of that claim. It's a repeat of rhetoric we've heard before — pretty soon Mr. Bush needs to show he can make progress on the bloated deficit.
Ryan Masse ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science and economics.
