State of reality?

After 365 days of unrealized promises, wasted time and flagrant abuse at the hands of a do-nothing congress, a war-weary American public gathered in anticipation of another attempt to, in 50 minutes, dress up our political reality in pretty prose.\nThis was the State of the Union as it arrived Tuesday, a year and what has proved to be a political lifetime since the divided-down-the-middle 2006 address.\nThe underlying desperation on the president's face as he delivered the last tattered bits of his original agenda, the one he set out to shove down the throats of post-Sept. 11 America years before, said more of the state of our union than anything that could have been dolled up with diplomatic sugarcoating. Not even the most eloquent line borrowed from the best presidential speech writer could have distracted Americans.\nClearly his safe speech could not convince Congress, and after watching his approval ratings slide off the charts (a mere 28 percent of people approve of him, according to CBS), it remains to be seen whether Bush has even convinced himself. The reality of these circumstances couldn't be hidden behind the splendor that paraded around the chambers Tuesday night. \nYears into the Bush presidency it seems that the actual state of our union reflects the state of our president, whose last hope in salvaging his legacy lies with compromise and hinges on progress within the Democratic-controlled Congress. \nIn 2007, American is a nation weakened, divided and confused by a quagmire of a war that it's losing. The president, already plagued by lame-duck status, is becoming increasingly irrelevant, even among his own party.\nHe has essentially been left standing alone, pleading just to keep his last increasingly uneasy and diminishing supporters. Even among Republicans it is evident he is buying time in a direr attempt to redeem himself and salvage what remains of his dwindling political clout.\nAfter midterm elections, in which the president became perhaps more of a hindrance to his own party than a policy leader, Bush is now facing a tough new Democratic majority that was elected almost solely to oppose his plan in Iraq.\nAs a reflection of the country's disapproval of his handling of the war (64 percent of people disapprove of the way he's handling his job, also according to CBS), and after years of ineffective foreign policy, Bush decided to abandon his "stay the course" mantra. And even though his own party was left noticeably fatigued by public opinion's overwhelming cry for troop withdrawal, he proposed sending more American troops.\nReality had finally caught up with the president as he delivered a speech that, calling the war in Iraq the "defining struggle of our time," eventually described a worst-case scenario. An "emboldened enemy," consequences that are "grievous and far-reaching," an entire region drawn into the conflict -- this hypothetical scenario he described runs a close parallel to reality.\nWith our nation facing circumstances that even the president thought nightmarish, it seems hope for our union is resting on the Democratic Congress -- and a better ballot choice in '08.