The President Finds a Soft Landing in Oklahoma

With public anxiety growing over gasoline prices and with job growth slowing, President Bush used a college commencement address on Saturday to assure graduates that they were entering a marketplace with good jobs at high salaries.

He urged them to “harness the promise of technology without becoming slaves to technology. My advice is, ensure that science serves the cause of humanity, and not the other way around.”

Stopping short of directly invoking the hot-button topics of embryonic stem cell research and human cloning, the president cautioned the Oklahoma State graduates that the modern world would present them with “profound dilemmas.”

“Science offers the prospect of eventual cures for terrible diseases, and temptations to manipulate life and violate human dignity,” said Bush, who has backed limits on the use of embryonic stem cells and cloning technology.

In coming to this football-crazed college town in the heart of Republican-friendly Oklahoma at a time of sinking approval ratings, Bush was following in the footsteps of another Republican president. Thirty-two years ago, Richard Nixon came here at the height of the Watergate scandal, seeking a friendly audience.

Although some campus appearances have sparked antiwar protests against Bush, he was greeted Saturday by 2,700 rain-soaked graduates and their families with cheers and applause that began when his helicopter came within sight of Boone Pickens Stadium.

The president’s positive economic assessment came a day after a government report showed slower-than-expected job growth last month. His speech highlighted more optimistic indicators, such as rising wages and soaring stock values.

“Some good news for you: The job market for college graduates is the best it’s been in years,” he said. “The economy of ours is strong, and so you’ll have more jobs to choose from than previous classes, and your starting salaries will be higher. And the opportunities beyond are only limited by the size of your dreams.” Bush has used past graduation speeches to provide detailed defenses of policies such as the war in Iraq, but he avoided such controversial specifics here. He is scheduled to deliver three other commencement addresses this spring, including one on Thursday at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College.

The president encouraged the Oklahoma graduates to embrace new technologies, prompting laughter when he compared the old 45-rpm records he listened to as a college student to today’s iPod culture. But in addition to the moral questions that science has raised, he warned, the Internet and other developments could isolate people from their families and neighbors.

“These advances in technology will transform lives -- and they will present you with profound dilemmas,” he said.

Bush cited growing competition from China and India, and although he did not delve into the controversies over U.S. ties with those and other nations, he warned that avoiding engagement “is a sure path to stagnation and decline.”

“We should welcome competition, because it makes our country stronger and more prosperous,” he said.

Bush’s visit lasted less than an hour, but he took a few minutes before the speech to meet privately with the family of Luke James, a 2002 Oklahoma State graduate and member of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division who was killed in Iraq.

The president paid homage to James during his speech, noting that the young second lieutenant received a Bronze Star and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Bush also tossed in some of his favorite self-effacing jokes about his lack of studiousness as an undergraduate at Yale and about his sometimes awkward use of language. He joked that he was proof that there was “life after English comp.”

“I know the professors who taught me English marvel at my way of words,” he said.

With a nod to the Oklahoma State mascot, Bush seized on the chance to poke fun at critics at home and around the world who say the U.S. president has been cavalier with military force.

“If you read the papers, you know that when some want to criticize me, they call me a cowboy,” he said. “This cowboy is proud to [be] standing here in the midst of a lot of other cowboys.”