Guests Help Bush Get Points Across

Recognizing individual accomplishments in a State of the Union address is a modern presidential tradition. Usually, the honorees are human.

On Tuesday night, however, among the 24 presidential guests invited to the ornate House gallery was Rex, a bomb-sniffing German shepherd who occupied a prime aisle seat alongside his handler, Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jamie Dana. Both were injured -- Dana severely, Rex slightly -- in Iraq last June when a bomb exploded under their vehicle.

Even before she recovered from her injuries, Dana, 27, began fighting to adopt Rex. But military regulations -- and federal law -- said the 5-year-old dog could not be decommissioned until he hit the working-dog retirement age of 10 to 14 years.

Members of Congress took up Dana’s cause, writing a measure that allowed some exceptions to the adoption rule and attaching it to legislation Bush signed last month. On Jan. 13, the Air Force made the adoption official.

By inviting military personnel, teachers, students and volunteers to join First Lady Laura Bush in the gallery Tuesday, the president was following a State of the Union tradition, started by President Reagan, of honoring U.S. citizens and a few foreign guests for their achievements. It also is a way to provide the audience at home with living examples of the messages the president wants to deliver.

On Tuesday night, the guests were there to represent Bush’s call for improved competitiveness, better education standards, new sources of energy and a policy of active engagement with the world. The largest number, eight, either were in the military or were family members of fallen troops.

In an extended defense of the Iraq war, Bush singled out the parents and widow of Marine Staff Sgt. Daniel Clay, 27. Clay and nine others from the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment from Twentynine Palms, Calif., were killed near Fallouja by a bomb put together from artillery shells. Bush read from a letter in which Clay told his family not to “hesitate to honor and support those of us who have the honor of protecting that which is worth protecting.”

Other guests included a widowed mother from Afghanistan who was elected to a speaker’s position in the Afghan National Assembly; a 16-year-old volunteer from Louisiana who has worked on rebuilding efforts after Hurricane Katrina; and a University of Colorado graduate student who led the winning team of the Solar Decathlon, a clean-energy contest sponsored by Energy Department.