SOTU

The wife and I watched the State of the Union address tonight. I thought it was a generally good speech, but like most SOTU addresses, there were a lot of cliches and a lot of clapping, both of which get a little old pretty quickly.

As you might expect, I agree with most of Bush's policy stances, although I'm not sure why pro-sports steroids made a State of the Union address.

I thought that Bush was effective as a speechmaker; as the Better Half commented, he really has improved in this regard since he took office. I thought the best line of the speech was this one: "Some critics have said our duties in Iraq must be internationalized. This particular criticism is hard to explain to our partners in Britain... Australia... Japan... South Korea... the Philippines... Thailand... Italy... Spain... Poland... Denmark... Hungary... Bulgaria... Ukraine... Romania... the Netherlands, Norway, El Salvador, and the 17 other countries that have committed troops to Iraq." Bingo, Mr. President. (Someone needs to read this line to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who in the Democrat rebuttal said that Bush "has pursued a go-it-alone foreign policy that leaves us isolated abroad." Oops.)

Again, I thought it was a good speech, all in all. I look forward to Bush's next such address in 2005 ;-)