The State of the Union, of course, always sucks. As Marty Kaplan put it on Huffington Post,
"It's a classic pseudo-event, a circus act in the divert-the-masses tradition of bread-and-circuses, a night of theater-of-the-absurd promoted and covered with unbearable sanctimony. The politicians and the media are locked in a folie-a-deux, a mutual hallucination that this is a Meaningful Moment in our civic religion."
The President bumbled through an hour of applause-interrupted defensiveness, with the occasional outright lie thrown in. By my rough count, he said "terror" or "terrorists" 18 times and "freedom" 15 times. He skirted around Iraq, floated out false optimism, ignored the reality of Afghanistan, pulled back on his social security agenda, and rambled a bit about malpractice and health savings account, as if anybody, anywhere actually believes that's the problem.
Possibly, the only thing sadder than the notion of "clean coal" having anything to do with our future and tough-talk on Iran that includes the word "nukyular", was the Democratic response.
Tim Kaine, you suck. Stop reading the cards, put down your creepy raised eyebrow, and if you want to appeal to the south, be subtle about the religious stuff. Seriously. The man has no appeal, no inflection, and said nothing intelligent. This was a perfect opportunity for the party to swoop in, and not only step on the President after his cower-in-a-corner damage control speech, but also offer up a clear alternative agenda. Instead, we got Kaine.
Possibly the only redeeming factor was watching McCain clap like one of those toy monkeys with cymbals, and of course, the outright hilarious looks on Hillary's face. I have newfound respect for the woman. Oh, and Karl Rove? You're totally slipping.
I was also unaware that anyone important was really pushing isolationism hard enough for that to be such a rhetorical priority in Bush's speech.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I liked Kaine's speech a lot, but he does need to fix that eyebrow thing. And did McCain get a glass eye recently? That thing is frickin' frightening.