T-minus 354 days

President Bush delivered his final State of the Union Address Monday night, only to be met with the sounds of crickets chirping across the country. I got the sense that this final address was a complete non-event. With President Bush’s approval ratings hovering in the low 30s, polls suggest most Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. Everyone (including Democrats and Republicans) is so swept away by the future presidential nominees that the annual State of the Union address felt like an afterthought. A senior adviser to former Vice President Al Gore said, “Nothing he says is going to be important for anything that happens in the next 12 months.”\nI’d have felt interest if I thought President Bush would finally inject a dose of reality into the speech, but no such luck. It was just another demonstration of disconnect between him and the country. Nevertheless, in case you missed it, here are a few great moments of detachment from Dubya’s final report.\nHe called for Congress to reauthorize the infamous No Child Left Behind Act, of which he claimed: “Today no one can deny its results.” Of course he failed to clarify how we should define “results.” Would a result be training children how to pass standardized tests rather than think critically? Perhaps another one is cutting funding to schools that need it most – where classrooms are over crowded, resources are scarce, teachers receive poor compensation, and therefore children “fail?” Those are his results?\nPresident Bush also dedicated very little of his 53-minute speech to citizens’ growing concerns about the economy. Instead he referenced Iraq more times than ever. He chose to ignore the principal fears of his constituents and made one last ditch effort to divert attention and drum up support for unpopular, ill-conceived military aggression that in many ways has contributed to the current economic worries.\nAnd in a statement that harkened back to his once-celebrated promise to be a “uniter, not a divider,” he called for Congress and the presidential nominees to “show ,our fellow Americans, that Republicans and Democrats can compete for votes and cooperate for results at the same time.” Unfortunately, after President Bush’s abysmal demonstration of cooperation and unity in the last eight years, such admonitions appear empty. After terrorists attacked the country, Bush squandered the few months of proud, flag-waving national unity. He squandered the goodwill of nations that wanted to sympathize with our tragedy. He rejected bills that didn’t match his one-track vision. His demands for marriage amendments, abortion laws, stem-cell limitations and other socially-divisive politics continued the harmful culture wars that distract us from cooperating over the concerns that could actually strengthen our nation.\nTherefore, I offer my uplifting State of the Union address to you: We are T-minus 354 days and counting before the state of the union finally moves from troubled to hopeful.