SOTU, Or A Rhetorical Exercise in Doublespeak

Last night's State of the Union speech by President Bush, his last, was a not unexpected exercise in political duplicity. Here are some lowlights:
--"As we meet tonight, our economy is undergoing a period of uncertainty. America has added jobs for a record 52 straight months, but jobs are now growing at a slower pace. Wages are up, but so are prices for food and gas ... At kitchen tables across our country, there is a concern about our economic future." No kidding.
**Census Bureau: "While median household income in 2006 rose by 0.7 percent, the real median earnings of both men and women who worked full-time, year-round declined between 2005 and 2006. The median earnings of men declined 1.1 percent to $42,261. The median earnings of women declined 1.2 percent to $32,515.20 This is the third consecutive year that men and women experienced a decline in earnings."
**New York Times: "National health spending soared above $2 trillion for the first time in 2006 and has nearly doubled in the last decade, amounting to an average of $7,000 a person," according to the government. And, "national health spending first exceeded $1 trillion in 1995. Since then, even when adjusted for inflation, health spending has grown at a rapid clip, increasing 64 percent in 11 years."

--"Our security, our prosperity, and our environment all require reducing our dependence on oil."
**From Open Secrets (links courtesy of ThinkProgress): Oil and gas industry campaign contributions by year:
2000: $34 million + (21% Democrats 78% Republicans)
2002: $24 million + (20% Dems. 80% Reps.)
2004: $25 million + (19% Dems. 80% Reps.)
2006: $20 million + (18% Dems. 82% Reps.)
--"Let us fund new technologies that can generate coal power while capturing carbon emissions."
**From EarthJustice: "During the 2000 presidential elections, the Bush-Cheney campaign received a total of $2,872,473 from energy and extractive interests. Of this amount, $422,739 was contributed by electric utilities, including several of those well-known for running some of the nation’s oldest and dirtiest coal-burning power plants: Southern Company, First Energy, and Reliant Energy."
**According to the League of Conservation Voters, in the Bush budget proposal for FY 2008, "90% of the Department of Energy’s funding increase is directed toward research in fossil fuels and nuclear power, rather than towards developing new renewable and efficient technologies"

--"We are engaged in the defining ideological struggle of the 21st century. The terrorists oppose every principle of humanity and decency that we hold dear. Yet in this war on terror, there is one thing we and our enemies agree on: In the long run, men and women who are free to determine their own destinies will reject terror and refuse to live in tyranny." [emphasis added]
**The late Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan said: "The government is manipulating all this [terrorist attacks] in order to force people stay away from the election rallies. The ongoing wave of terrorist activities in the country is part of a conspiracy to terrorize people from attending political meetings."
**The New York Times on the Iraqi Parliament's recent Baathist law (a "benchmark") passage: "The measure, known as the Justice and Accountability Law, is meant to open government jobs to former members of the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein — the bureaucrats, engineers, city workers, teachers, soldiers and police officers who made the government work until they were barred from office after the American invasion in 2003. But the legislation is at once confusing and controversial, a document riddled with loopholes and caveats to the point that some Sunni and Shiite officials say it could actually exclude more former Baathists than it lets back in, particularly in the crucial security ministries ... [in response] there has been mostly silence from American officials ... But interpretations of the measure’s actual effects varied widely among Iraqi officials ... The most extreme interpretations of the measure’s effects actually came from Shiite officials. Some of them hailed it because it would ban members of even the lowest party levels from the most important ministries: justice, interior, defense, finance and foreign."

--"We're adding 3,200 Marines to our forces in Afghanistan, where they will fight the terrorists and train the Afghan Army and police. Defeating the Taliban and al Qaeda is critical to our security ...."
**Defense Secretary Robert Gates said: "Al Qaeda right now seems to have turned its face toward Pakistan and attacks on the Pakistani government and Pakistani people."
**Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen said: "I think certainly if there is a desire on the part of the Pakistani armed forces and the Pakistani government to have us assist, we would certainly try to do that. They're a strong ally with respect to this [al Qaeda in Pakistan] challenge that we have, the security challenge ...."
**Yet Pakistani "President" Pervez Musharraf on an American troop presence in Pakistan: "Musharraf has made it clear that a U.S. military mission to capture Osama bin Laden or other top al Qaeda leaders on Pakistani soil would be unwelcome and 'against the sovereignty of Pakistan.'" And, "Nobody will come here until we ask them to come and we haven't asked them," and, in response to the question of whether he would treat uninvited Americans as invaders, Musharraf said, "certainly."

--On wiretapping and FISA: "If you don't act by Friday, our ability to track terrorist threats would be weakened and our citizens will be in greater danger. Congress must ensure the flow of vital intelligence is not disrupted. Congress must pass liability protection for companies believed to have assisted in the efforts to defend America. We've had ample time for debate. The time to act is now."
**The Protect America Act was passed in August, 2007 and is set to expire on February 1, 2008. FISA will not expire. Kenneth L. Wainstein, assistant attorney general for national security, acknowledged to the New York Times that if the PAA expires "intelligence officials would still be able to continue eavesdropping on already approved targets for another year under the law."
**Sen. Dodd (D-CT) rightly notes that the "liability protection" demanded by Bush "for companies believed to have assisted" (a peculiar sentence construction apparently designed to admit nothing) in wiretapping Americans "favor[s] the rights of his corporate friends over citizens’ rights to privacy when it comes to their phone records. I stand adamantly opposed to retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that may have illegally aided the federal government in warrantless wiretapping, and will do what I can to deny the President the unprecedented and unwarranted expansion of power he seeks."

The parsing of the speech could continue, of course, but my time and your patience prohibits it. Now, a SOTU is not intended to be a comprehensive policy statement, but it's not too much to ask that it be written to reflect at least some approximation of reality, despite political, partisan, differences. It is, after all a speech on the State of the Union, not a defense of a presidency gone bad. Unless, of course, it is.