The Speech and the Vision : Bush once again shows domestic-policy unease

What a difference a year makes.

Last year at this time the commander in chief was delivering his State of the Union address as a wartime President.

The war had barely begun, the measure of Saddam Hussein and his allegedly fearsome army had not been taken and the nation was loyally rallying around the flag and President Bush.

Now, a year later, with the Gulf War over, the memory of the Bush team’s brilliant tactical performance fading by the day, the economy in real difficulty and each new poll showing his popularity on the decline, George Bush, as if a victim of his own success, is forced into the role of a peacetime President. It’s not his strongest suit.

THE EXPECTATION: This State of the Union speech got one extraordinary buildup. All the criticism about the President’s lack of a serious domestic agenda was eating at the Bush inner circle--not to mention the polls. The speech would be the defining moment of his domestic-side presidency, just as his facing down of Hussein tested the mettle of his foreign-affairs side.

But then, in the classic beltway game, bits of the Administration’s proposals began to leak out. By Tuesday night there was not a lot in the speech that was not already known to some extent; and not much in it that was likely to stir the nation’s imagination.

THE CONTENT: Although some of the President’s proposals were clear enough--who could argue, for instance, with increased funding of the popular Head Start educational program?--other proposals were delivered in only vague outline. The President’s suggestion of the need for a long-term investment strategy, involving a reformulated tax code, strikes us as well worth discussing. By contrast some of his short-term tax-cut suggestions seem like election-year talking points.

Where Bush was on solid ground indeed was his restated insistence on the need to open world trade markets and the need to fight protectionism.

Notwithstanding America’s balance-of-trade difficulties with Japan, trade exports are one of America’s few growth sectors right now. It is destructive to U.S. economic interests to fuel protectionist fires. “We will work to break down the walls that stop world trade,” Bush said with conviction. Good.

THE VISION: Yes, that phrase again--”the vision thing.” Too bad there was no domestic equivalent in his speech of the vision that underlies his sincere belief in open world markets.

True, the President’s delivery was forceful and assured. But the message he delivered needed to outline a better sense of America’s compelling domestic needs--such as jobs.

The nation heard the President’s proper concern for education, some quick hits on the economy, a new cities commission, vague notions on health-care reform--but little domestic clarity.

Indeed, on the evidence of this State of the Union, and the past year as a whole, it may not be unfair to state that the farther away from U.S. shores a problem is, the clearer President George Bush appears to see it.