Wednesday, January 30, 2002
Like any red-blooded American with nothing better to do, I watched the State of the Union address (SOTUA) last night. It's pretty funny to watch the entire US government stand up (minus the nine Supreme Court Justices) and clap like robots every few seconds, though I'll admit the novelty wears off fairly quickly. According to Brit Hume, there were 75 standing ovations, despite the fact that the speech was less than an hour in length. I'm no math major, but that's over 1.25 standing ovations per minute (SO/M) and sounds dangerous. Perhaps the DC cops can use their cameras to pick one head at random from the chamber, guess who it might be, and send them a ticket. Enough about the peripherals, let the grading commence!
Foreign Policy: I'm giving him an A. Virginia Tech doesn't have an A+ in its grading scale, thus neither do I. We're going to whoop that "axis of eee-vil," especially those two Ira- countries in Asia. Our prisoners in Guantanamo Bay are going to stay there, and the rest of the world knows where they can stick their rolled-up opinions. What else is there to say? Everyone had to stand up and applaud everything he said, lest they look like Europeans.
Domestic Policy: HokiePundit will refer to himself in the third-person and award a C. I know most conservatives aren't happy with his domestic policy initiatives, and if they were the only aspect I was grading, he'd get a D-. However, Bush is smarter than most people think, and I think I see that at work here. Yes, the initiatives are silly, unworkable, and likely to cause conniption fits for conservatives and libertarians. However, it's not what he's proposing, but how. He states that responsibility, hard work, and less dependence on government are the guiding principles here. Thus, Bush adds the support of liberals to his current power base while laying the groundwork for a responsible government (gasp!). As much as the Right may want to have its entire wish list put into place overnight, it would be a failure to do so without proper support. By "changing the tone," Dubya is making it possible for reasonable governing to be practiced in the future. Conservatives have been thinking of him as their new Messiah, when he should be considered their John the Baptist.
Foreign Policy: I'm giving him an A. Virginia Tech doesn't have an A+ in its grading scale, thus neither do I. We're going to whoop that "axis of eee-vil," especially those two Ira- countries in Asia. Our prisoners in Guantanamo Bay are going to stay there, and the rest of the world knows where they can stick their rolled-up opinions. What else is there to say? Everyone had to stand up and applaud everything he said, lest they look like Europeans.
Domestic Policy: HokiePundit will refer to himself in the third-person and award a C. I know most conservatives aren't happy with his domestic policy initiatives, and if they were the only aspect I was grading, he'd get a D-. However, Bush is smarter than most people think, and I think I see that at work here. Yes, the initiatives are silly, unworkable, and likely to cause conniption fits for conservatives and libertarians. However, it's not what he's proposing, but how. He states that responsibility, hard work, and less dependence on government are the guiding principles here. Thus, Bush adds the support of liberals to his current power base while laying the groundwork for a responsible government (gasp!). As much as the Right may want to have its entire wish list put into place overnight, it would be a failure to do so without proper support. By "changing the tone," Dubya is making it possible for reasonable governing to be practiced in the future. Conservatives have been thinking of him as their new Messiah, when he should be considered their John the Baptist.
