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Our president, George Walker Bush, started his State of
the Union address with a fair amount of grace and dignity
on Tuesday night, but soon slipped when he said I
congratulate the Democrat majority.
As William F. Buckley and many others have pointed out,
the proper adjectival form of Democrat
is
Democratic.
Buckley observed that this usage has
the effect of injecting politics into language, and should
be avoided.
Bush's written text even had it right, but he still
couldn't say it. It reminded me of the Lenny Bruce routine
about the supposed difficulties Lyndon Johnson encountered
in learning to pronounce Negro
correctly.
Every president since Johnson's successor, Richard
Nixon, has talked about how we need to reduce our
dependence on foreign oil.
And it hasn't happened yet,
despite more than three decades of presidential prodding.
So don't hold your breath.
In most years, the opposition response
to the
State of the Union speech is about as interesting as
watching nails rust. This year the Democrats did well,
perhaps too well, in selecting Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia to
deliver the response.
They did well because Webb quickly moved to two areas
where our respective parties have largely stood in
contradiction.
Regarding our economy with record
corporate profits, he observed that Wages and salaries
for our workers are at all-time lows as a percentage of
national wealth
as Our manufacturing base is being
dismantled and sent overseas.
As for Iraq, The President took us into this war
recklessly.
Webb drew on his family's three generations
of military service. We owed them our loyalty, as
Americans, and we gave it. But they owed us -- sound
judgment, clear thinking, concern for our welfare, a
guarantee that the threat to our country was equal to the
price we might be called upon to pay in defending
it.
Webb conveyed more in nine minutes than I've heard in
the combined political speeches of this millennium. He
didn't dance around; he drew some lines and said that if
President Bush does not act in the national interest, we
will be showing him the way.
That's why the Democrats may have done too well in
picking him to deliver the response. The prominent
Democrats running for president, in comparison to Webb, all
seem as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal
--
calculated, solicitous, obligatory, anything but fighters
for what they say is important, whereas Webb comes out
swinging. He's a warrior, like his hero, Andrew
Jackson.
Webb for President? He has an excellent resume, including a stint as Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan. His combat record should be immune to the Swift-Boating slime-mongers. And he must be one hell of a campaigner, because he won in Virginia last year despite facing a popular incumbent and the best efforts of the Republican attack machine directed by Dick Wadhams.
It's an engaging fantasy, but you have to consider the tragedy of Sen. John McCain, just seven years ago the straight-talking scarred veteran who looked ready to lead the Republican Party toward common sense and away from the Religious Right. Now he's busy pandering to the Dobsonites.
So it might also be with Webb if he decided to run for President and surrounded himself with advisers, consultants and strategists, all looking for ways to avoid saying anything of substance while designing his wardrobe.
That seems to be the nature of American politics these days, and Webb may best serve where he is, as an eloquent voice in the Senate.
But it is fun to imagine a 2008 Democratic convention in Denver where there's no clear winner after the primaries among Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and all the others, and on the fourth ballot, the party turns to the battle-tested junior senator from Virginia -- who wins in a landslide because Americans want someone to speak for us, not at us.
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