January 23, 2007
State of the Union
State of the Union addresses delivered late in a presidency tend to be rather elegiac in tone. It’s not difficult to understand one reason why: Lame ducks have much more to look back on than forward to. So they tend to stress accomplishment as a map pointing toward what might yet be accomplished. They tend to express sorrow for those things not accomplished.
Expect President Bush to go another way or to define accomplishment in such a way that most Americans may not recognize it, assuming that this poll result–just “22% of Americans say they want the president to set policy for the country–is accurate.
I’ll offer my analysis of the speech by Thursday afternoon.
Posted by acline | January 23, 2007 | Posted in: Politics |
