Bush speaks at pivotal moment for country, world

By JON FRANDSEN
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON — President Bush faces two huge tasks when he delivers his State of the Union address Tuesday night: rallying the American public behind a widely criticized economic plan and persuading the world that war is preferable to letting Iraq keep weapons of mass destruction.

The White House, ever mindful that Bush faces a re-election battle in less than two years, is promising that most of the 9 p.m. EST speech will dwell on the pocketbook issues that are of growing concern to the public.

"Most of the State of the Union will not be about Iraq," Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer said Monday. "…I think the American people have domestic concerns as their No. 1 priority."

Bush's address comes at a perilous time for the president and the nation.

"The speech is enormously significant and an even greater challenge for the president than the speech he gave after September 11, where his challenge was to demonstrate his leadership and where the course of action we should take was clear to just about everybody," said Norm Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

"Now, it is not at all clear to everybody what course of action we should take on foreign or domestic policies," he said.

Bush's approval ratings have dropped slightly in recent months but are still at 60 percent, according to a new USA TODAY-CNN-Gallup poll. The survey of 1,000 adults, taken Jan. 23-25, also indicates a nation almost evenly divided over Bush's approach to Iraq and his handling of the economy. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Democrats seized on the uncertainty that pervades the nation.

"The triple threat of war, terrorism and recession are combining to make Americans unsure about their future and unclear about the course our nation is taking," Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said in a speech to the National Press Club billed as a "pre-buttal."

Foreign policy
Americans increasingly anxious about whether they will keep their jobs and their health insurance - or desperately hoping to return to work - will not be the only ones watching the speech.

"He is talking to Americans, but he is also talking to the Iraqis, the Saudis, the French, the Germans," said Richard Perle, a Pentagon official during the Reagan administration.

Bush is certain to address a major report issued Monday by U.N. weapons inspectors, who said Iraq has allowed its teams to operate in the country but has failed to provide evidence that it is destroying all weapons of mass destruction. The report came two months after inspections resumed.

Fleischer said Bush will remind the world that "time is running out" for Iraq to disarm, but said those listening to the president's speech "won't hear a deadline. They won't hear a declaration of war."

Fleischer said the world will hear variations of the questions Secretary of State Colin Powell asked Monday of Iraq: "Where is the anthrax? Where are the chemical and biological munitions? Where are the mobile biological laboratories?"

Bush also will have to address the crisis growing on the Korean peninsula, and explain why the United States is pursuing a military solution to the threat posed by Iraq while seeking a diplomatic one to prevent North Korea from obtaining nuclear weapons.

The State of the Union "is an unusually important forum for a serious argument about where we are headed as a nation on a subject that people are intensely interested in," said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., citing the Iraq and Korean concerns.

Domestic issues
Bush plans to concentrate much of his speech on two key domestic concerns: his economic package and health care.

Democrats have attacked the 10-year $674 billion tax cut plan as a gift to the rich that will be of little immediate benefit to the economy. But Bush will argue that the elimination of most taxes on stock dividends will restore the confidence in markets and spur investments that will create jobs.

Bush also will outline a plan to overhaul the Medicare program and create a new prescription drug benefit for seniors. Both parties have promised a plan to reduce the cost of medicines for more than two years, but have been unable to produce one in Congress.

Bush will tout his compassionate conservative approach to government and unveil some relatively small proposals, including a program to help children whose parents are in jail or otherwise unable to help care for them.

And the president will recount successes of the war on terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and New York City, and provide marching orders for the new Department of Homeland Security and its new secretary, Tom Ridge.