he President's Speech Focuses on Ideals, Not the Details
By TODD S. PURDUM

Published: January 21, 2005

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20 - President Bush began his second term without uttering the words "Iraq," "Afghanistan," "Sept. 11" or "terrorism." But those omissions seemed to be precisely the point, allowing him to cast the crises and controversies of his first four years - and the ones he welcomes in the next - as a seamless struggle in defense of the nation's founding creed: freedom.

"The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world," Mr. Bush proclaimed, pledging himself to "the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world" in terms that deliberately echoed both Woodrow Wilson and John F. Kennedy, who summoned the world 44 years ago to ask "what together we can do for the freedom of man."

It is for historians to judge how well Mr. Bush's actions have fit, or may yet fulfill, his words. There remains a wide gulf between his eloquent aspirations and the realities on the ground, from Capitol Hill to the Middle East. Executing his ideas will not be easy, at home or abroad.

His tone was proud, unapologetic, even defiant, and his emphasis on foreign policy muffled his outline of the domestic agenda that he and his aides have said is so important to the success of his second term.

But his speech's very loftiness and its missionary zeal also amounted to a tacit acknowledgment that he believes that much of the world and perhaps many of his fellow citizens have misunderstood his actions in invading Iraq and threatening authoritarian governments in Iran and North Korea. He himself has not always described his motives in such idealistic terms, so the speech was a chance to hit the reset button.

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BALLS!!, said the Emperor!!

And the Empress swiftly kicked him in the crotch and said, "How's that for a couple of acres?"

Seriously -- does anyone else feel that Bush's disconnection from the ground truth is something akin to classic fugue-state mentality, skipping joyfully into the bright clouds of jolly generalization while your hand holds a blood-drenched carving knife?

The State ofd the Nation, of course, is "42".


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