WASHINGTON – Coming off his most difficult year in office, President Bush used his State of the Union address Tuesday night to try to give his embattled administration a new start, speaking expansively about his aspirations for the final years of his presidency – but offering a scaled-down blueprint for governing.
Bush begins this election year far weaker than he was a year ago. The most telling evidence came on domestic policy. Last year, he used his State of the Union address to launch an ambitious plan to restructure Social Security. This year, with that plan not even coming to a vote in the House or Senate, he called for a commission to examine the effect of baby-boom retirees on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Instead, Bush put his domestic focus on the economy, health care and energy, problems of far more immediate concern to voters than the future of the government’s retirement insurance program. If he hoped in 2005 to show he was grappling with issues of the future, Tuesday night he sought to reassure Americans that he understands why so many of them are unhappy with the direction of the country.
The president has never lacked for big ambitions, particularly in foreign policy, and he restated many of them Tuesday night. But the domestic policy agenda included initiatives that have been around for some time.
Bush’s agenda is constrained by political and fiscal realities. Deep partisanship in Washington and the prospect of Democratic gains in the midterm elections lessen the likelihood of cooperation between the two parties. The deep deficit and pressure from Republicans to cut spending restrain the president’s ability to spend as significantly on domestic initiatives as he might like.
Down in the polls, Bush sought to frame the coming year as a time of potentially decisive choices on national and economic security, and he provided a vigorous defense of his policies at home and abroad.
“We will choose to act confidently in pursuing the enemies of freedom, or retreat from our duties in the hope of an easier life,” he said. “We will choose to build our prosperity by leading the world economy, or shut ourselves off from trade and opportunity.”
The humbling of Bush came in many forms last year. Slow progress toward stabilization in Iraq, Palestinian elections in which the radical Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, emerged victorious, and a growing threat from an Iran developing nuclear weapons have shown the limits of administration policies.
Domestically, beyond the failure on Social Security legislation, House Republicans rejected Bush’s immigration plan and Hurricane Katrina dealt a blow to the administration’s claims to competence in the face of crisis – while punching an additional hole in the budget.
After Bush’s poll numbers plummeted, White House aides started rethinking the second-term possibilities. Bush was forced to scrap his agenda and curtail his ambitions.
The result was a speech Tuesday night written with far more attention to the politics of the moment. On energy, Bush called for reduced consumption of oil from the Middle East by 75 percent over the next two decades. His health care proposals aim at expanding coverage and portability of health insurance, relative modest proposals at a time about 45 million Americans lack coverage.
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