Jim Lobe

US President George W. Bush, who has made it his mission to avoid his father’s political mistakes, appears poised to repeat them in spite of himself. His surprisingly defensive State of the Union Address on Tuesday, which was long on determination and defiance but exceedingly short on programme detail and new initiatives, underlined how firmly his course has been set and how little he can or is willing to do to change it.

Indeed, by announcing that the next four years will be very much like the last three, Bush, like his father before him, has become a fixed target for next November’s elections, a point brought home by an uncharacteristically aggressive Democratic Party response after the president finished his speech.

Bush’s father, who loved international diplomacy above all, failed to understand that most voters in 1992 were more concerned about job losses.

In addressing these deficiencies, the elder Bush was hobbled not only by

his own preppy aloofness — a problem the younger Bush does not suffer — but also by the fact that the yawning fiscal deficits of the Reagan era had emptied the Treasury.

Unlike his father, the younger Bush inherited a huge surplus that, as a result of tax cuts and the enormous increase in defence and other spending related to the “war on terror”, has been transformed once again into a deficit, a shortfall that now seriously threatens the country’s fiscal health. So depleted are the nations coffers that, “It is actually a cruel hoax to pretend that Washington can afford to do anything new", noted the New York Times on Wednesday. Thus, like his father, Bush has no choice but to run on his record.

Bush’s speech was also notable for its extraordinary stress on foreign policy, which took up the entire first half and constituted mainly a defence of his war on terror and the US-led attack on Iraq. The president even insisted, despite the total lack of evidence uncovered to date, that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s “programmes” for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) constituted a “serious and mounting threat to our country”. Bush said his aggressive pursuit of war against Iraq was responsible for Libya’s recent decision to voluntarily dismantle its own WMD programmes and for ongoing, although uncertain, negotiations involving North Korea and Iran.

Bush also insisted that the world was safer as a result of US actions, but also warned against complacency and called for extension of the controversial USA Patriot Act, which is opposed by many libertarians in his own party. Citing terrorist attacks from Casablanca to Jakarta, he noted that “the terrorists continue to plot against America and the civilised world”.

On domestic issues, Bush asked to enshrine tax cuts made in 2002; called for

enactment of his guest-worker programme for otherwise illegal immigrants; proposed private savings accounts for Social Security; offered modest packages for education, and suggested he might support a constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriages.

But the speech was also notable for what it omitted. Bush made no mention, for example, of the ambitious Moon and Mars exploration programme he introduced with much fanfare one week ago, a proposal that clearly bombed with a public that is increasingly anxious about the mounting deficit.

He also failed to address the environment, global AIDS, and, despite the focus on Iraq and the war on terrorism, the roiling Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the elusive leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist group, Osama bin Laden. Indeed, what modest new programmes he cited prompted hand wringing even among some of his strongest supporters.

That assessment is increasingly shared by Republican lawmakers, who have expressed growing anxiety about the huge costs being incurred in Iraq, and a growing consensus that a very expensive but overstretched army needs to be expanded by at least two divisions. The latter would boost annual defence spending past 500 billion dollars, at a time when eight million people are without jobs.

IPS