It seems to me that President has two serious problems, he did not address either one adequately in his annual State of the Union speech. For one thing, his spending is out of control. The other problem is Iraq.
Tonight he claimed this year his budget would “only” increase spending to 4%, this compared with 20% of previous years. This is only an election year ploy to seem to be a fiscal moderate. In reality people will honestly look at his record and look at all the non-defense spending bills: farms, medicare, and education; all this and reducing taxes so the fed actually has less money to give away to spending bills. It makes no fiscal sense. President Bush did not tell us why he has spent like (as The Economist recently coined) “faster than a French Socialists” over his administration.
He also named all the countries in his “coalition.” It is not that this is in significant, it could have been significant in World War I era balance of power politics. Post World War II America put a whole new set of International Law in stone. The Bush Administration has dismissed this and treated it with disdain. Their “coalition,” will not be on the correct side of history in fifty years because it undermines International Law by violating the Section VI of the UN Charter.
President Bush’s State of the Union hardly touched on any of this, because there is nothing he can say to change these facts. I do think he will lie, as he did when he was running for President in 2000, to sound like a moderate on foreign affairs fiscal discipline, and the economy; but as long as you continue to read my posts I won’t let you believe his lies.