Your Sunday Politics
It wouldn’t be fair to say that Washington, D.C., spent the past week swept up in "State of the Union Fever." After all, with the Inauguration only a few weeks past, there’s something about a SOTU that seems ... so yesterday. It’s been years since a president ascended the congressional pulpit to suggest that the State of our Union was anything other than straight-up applejack goodness for everyone and everybody, and the last one who suggested otherwise was that walking font of new age optimism, Gerald Ford. You knew going in that George W. Bush -- despite having campaigned all last year vowing to fix all the problems caused by his predecessor, George W. Bush -- was going to declare the nation to be in tip top shape. And so, we were thus dubbed “confident and strong.”
Of course, the "buts" started coming almost immediately after, and the biggest "but" fro this administration is definitely Social Security privatization (which is the term DCist will continue to use until we are formally given the Official GOP Talking Points Memo—we are not just going to be ignored, Karl!). The purply metaphor Bush used was the image of "a lot of grey" in the rear view mirror. Oh, no! It’s old people! And they’re -- gasp! -- changing lanes and moving into our blind spot! Looks like we’d better write into law a federally mandated slush fund for Wall Street investment bankers before it’s too late!
The Democrats, who were last seen singing self-pitying elegies to their own ineffectiveness in Condoleezza Rice’s hearing chamber, have surprisingly shifted course in the face of the coming debate over Social Security Reform. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, showed off his new brass pair in the hours before the SOTU, declaring: "President Bush should forget about privatizing Social Security. It will not happen." Oooh, snap! Of course, let’s remember that it remains to be seen whether every Republican in Congress is going to support Social Security privatization, after all the 35 million-member strong AARP has not yet begun to fight, and those AARPers have a funny way of making a legislator worry about their nice safe seats.
For D.C. residents, all the talk in the SOTU about "freedom" and the presence of numerous members of Congress holding ink-stained fingers aloft as a goofy show of solidarity with Iraqi voters must have seemed like a hollow joke. Bush said during the SOTU: "The United States has no right, no desire and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." At DCist, we’re only guessing, but we’d imagine Eleanor Holmes Norton might respond by saying: "What? No! Please! Impose it on us! Impose it on us!" This SOTU address must have been especially painful for DC residents yearning to breathe free, as the terms "freedom" and "liberty" were used with greater frequency than any other Bush SOTU.
D.C. residents will have to take solace in the promise that Laura Bush will be riding into the city’s most benighted areas to end their gang problems once and for all. Wonkette has already made us twist with discomfort after reporting on the FLOTUS’ post-SOTU activities in Philadelphia, where numerous children apparently received their "Passport to Manhood" at her hands. Ewwwww. Awkward, much? We at DCist have a funny feeling that Bush’s anti-gang initiative is going to more closely resemble the “Do Right And Follow Through" -- or "D.R.A.F.T." -- program that Tina Fey quipped about on last night’s "Saturday Night Live." After all, Iran’s not going to greet itself as a liberator, now is it?
One final note on the SOTU: if you haven’t already caught George W. Bush’s loving lip-lock with Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, here it is. What can we say? It is so easy to get swept up in the Joementum. Still, with all the talk about the need to defend traditional marriage, we note with irony that Alberto Gonzalez’s nomination apparently has two daddies.