State of the Union Address

Tonight I watched, along with my family, the State of the Union address given by President Bush. Actually, I only watched about a little more than a half of the full address, as we have no TV and I forgot about it anyway. I had to load up to a live stream on CNN, and the speech was already in progress.

I have maintained for years that if the dim-witted politicians who attend the address (and of course I'm being very ironic and untruthful here) would stop clapping after every third word the speech would only last 20 minutes, plus or minus a few for introductions, etc. I'm waiting for the President who announces, "please hold your applause until the end of my address this evening". Then I'll know we've found a top-notch President.

I found President Bush's speech talking a lot about "empowerment", and I agree. I am more inclined to be in favor of more of a government where the government just empowers private businesses and entrepreneurs and scientists. I like that idea. However, in my viewing of the last half of the speech I noticed that the President kept talking about increasing the budget for this and allocating double for that. How will we keep from deficit spending?

I found the democratic response to the State of the Union to be void of any real content. It was full of platitudes; she was just like Hamlet. "Join with us, and we can do great things. We can end all of these problems, just like the majority of Americans wants to do!" She never presented any alternative plans or anything with real substance, just trite, vapid comments in a monotone voice.

I have a great respect for President Bush. I have a great respect for anyone who is capable of uniting the multifarious diversity of this great nation in order to win the office, and I have a great respect for those that continue in the office and do their duty.

I find it interesting that one of President Bush's main points was that we must trust in the American people. I find that interesting because in AP Government we have been reading about how the Founding Fathers (at least according to Hofstadter's The American Political Tradition) distrusted the people and the masses, but concluded that popular sovereignty was the best option anyway because they could place the "rapacious self-interest" of man in another man's way to keep the playing field level.