Bush speech lacks knockout blow: analysts
Posted: 24 January 2007 1254 hrs

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WASHINGTON: Cursed by rock bottom poll ratings, chided by Congress's new Democratic masters, and bound up in Iraq's agony, President George W. Bush offered little on Tuesday to loosen his political straitjacket in his State of the Union address, analysts said.

Bush once strode into the House of Representatives bear pit unchallenged, using the annual speech to ram home his mastery over cowering political rivals, skewering US enemies and slotting them into an "axis of evil".

But the president was, on Tuesday, on a precipice, with public support hemorrhaging over the unpopular war in Iraq, and for the first time in his six White House years, in the minority in a Congress run by Democrats.

Bush warned Americans of a "nightmare scenario" that would result from defeat in Iraq, unveiled a new plan to cut gasoline use by 20 percent in 10 years, and produced a new plea to overhaul immigration laws.

But the president, with only two years left in his second term, and the 2008 presidential field sprinting out of the starting blocks, bore little resemblance to the man who was unchallenged in US politics – as recently as two years ago.

"The only resource he had left, was his rhetoric," said Buddy Howell, an expert on presidential speechmaking at Purdue University.

"He needed to hit a home run and he did not," said Howell, using a baseball metaphor to argue Bush needed a knockout blow to rescue his declining presidency.

Professor Steven Smith, a specialist on congressional politics at Washington University, St Louis, said Bush's delivery mirrored his perilous position.

"This was an extremely low-key speech, there was a bit of a drone to his speech at times, which I think reflected not defeatism, but a sense of realism," Smith said.

"This was a president who has viewed his role as being a cheerleader over the years, this speech had none of that."

Perched behind Bush's left shoulder, at the podium, was Democrat Nancy Pelosi, in a pale green suit, cheered to the rafters when Bush uttered words never before heard at the State of the Union speech: "Madam Speaker."

Since Bush's hope for any legislative triumphs now rests on accommodation with Democrats, Bush set the tone by warmly praising Pelosi, in perhaps the most effective moments of his speech.

"Given what he was facing he did an impressive job," said Dr Darryl Clark, an expert on presidential rhetoric at the University of Indianapolis.

In a reminder of Bush's lame duck status, television cameras often lingered on Democrats and Republicans plotting to grab the keys to the White House.

Senator Hillary Clinton, who electrified the US political scene on Saturday, by announcing her historic White House run, looked on from the back of the chamber.

One row in front, sat Senator Barack Obama, the rising star first-term Democratic Senator challenging her early dominance.

Senator John McCain, a Republican frontrunner, was also prominent in the audience, as the 2008 race that will further curtail Bush's power loomed.

"There is no doubt that (Bush) is especially lame even for a lame duck, this early in his last two years," said Clark. "He is really in a very, very weak position."

Bush, greyer and more drawn than the energetic figure who burst into the House for his first State of the Union speech in 2001, delivered his speech in measured tones – punctuated by less effusive ovations than in years gone by.

His rhetoric was devoid of the simply constructed, yet powerful flights of rhetoric of previous speeches that steadied Americans in the dark days after the September 11 attacks in 2001.

Perhaps reflecting the political cul-de-sac of the Iraq war, Bush was reduced to pleading for more time for his latest plan to pacify the nation, from a podium where he once vowed to disarm Saddam Hussein.

As it was, Bush warned the Congress, containing many members who want to start the redeployment of US troops that defeat in Iraq would unleash a "contagion of violence" across the Middle East.

"For America, this is a nightmare scenario," he said.

Bush's environmental proposals, though eyebrow raising in a nation addicted to its gas guzzling cars – a plan to cut 20-percent cut in gasoline use, in 10 years.

But critics saw little dramatic in the changes, and nothing to unduly concern the mighty Detroit auto industry. - AFP/so