The real meaning of the state of the union speech

The first thing to understand about the Bush administration is that, at least as regards domestic policy, there is no "policy shop." There is no group of people with any power whose job it is too identify critical national problems and formulate policies to solve those problems. Those who have that job description are so far down in the various bureaucracies and so far removed from actual decision-making at the level of the White House as to be almost irrelevant. In the White House, there are instead (a) people whose job it is to identify policies that will satisfy some political constituency such as the religious right or well-connected business interests, (b) people whose job it is to identify issues that are widely perceived among voters as important and that the Bush administration must therefore either speak out on or co-opt lest it appear irrelevant, (c) people whose job it is to make sure that no policy initiative that comes out of the administration runs afoul of important constituencies, and (d) people whose job it is to formulate a communications strategy to sell whatever policies arise from groups a and b and that survive vetting by group c.

Evidence for this statement: the book by Ron Suskind and Paul O'Neill and various other "inside" commentaries. The 2001 tax cuts, which arose in 1999 to solve a political problem (Bush's need to outlfank Steve Forbes among supply siders in the primaries) and went from being justified on supply-side grounds (during the primaries) to "the American people deserve to get their money back" (during the general election) to Keynesian grounds (during the 2001 recession). The drive to create personal accounts under Social Security, which was very popular with supply-siders, was promoted with great fanfare, but was not actually accompanied by a specific proposal of any kind. The promise to rebuild New Orleans after Katrina, which was not followed by action of any kind. The 2003 tax cuts, which Dick Cheney defended as "our due" after the Republican sweep of the 2002 midterm elections. And so on, and so on.

It follows that we are not to take any of the domestic policy proposals in last night's State of the Union speech as serious attempts to solve identified problems. In the case of health care and global warming, they are simply attempts by our president to appear relevant on issues that are obviously of concern to voters and Congress (the work of group b). They are largely toothless proposals because the group c people have vetted the life out of them. Hence they involve no significant financing, no new administrative bureaucracies. The health plan, in particular, will ruffle no feathers among the president's constituency because it can be packaged as a tax reform rather than a new program.

I'm tired of this, so very tired. I want a president who takes his job seriously again. Two more years...