State of The Union

Many, many bloggers - from Sullivan to Reding - covered the SOTU. I didn't watch, due to a prior commitment.

My second-hand impressions?

1. Not going wobbly on the war - good.
2. Going wobbly on spending - bad.

I have to confess; I was always torn about George W. Bush. Up through the convention, I supported Steve Forbes - and when it comes to economics, I still do.

Would Steve Forbes have reacted as well - maybe magnificently - to 9/11 as Bush did? Hard to say.

In some ways I echo Homer Hickam, author of October Sky, in a WSJ article cited on Medved today:

I don't agree with President Bush about everything but he's starting to remind me of Harry S. Truman. He gets with the program. You can argue with him about what he does and you might even be right, but you can't fault the man for getting out front and leading. That is, after all, what we hire our presidents to do.

And let's be honest - unless you're an ultra-left ostrich with your head buried in Noam Chomsky's ass the sand, that's what we need. It's wartime, and George W. Bush said "Damn the torpedoes", the world is a better and (shut up, Mad How) at least incrementally safer place now than it was two years ago.

What will be the long term consequences of all of this spending? As a conservative, it worries me. Bush in (hopefully) his second term will need to reel it in - and, without having to run for re-election, and especially with a rebounding economy to boost revenues, the deficit will go away eventually, just like it did for Clinton.

As a conservative, though, it is a little bitterly ironic; Bush really has been the anti-Clinton in his first term - fiscally very liberal (except for taxes), socially fairy conservative (although not nearly as much as some of his critics credit him for).

So I'd like to level out the social peaks and fill in the fiscal valleys, conservative-ily speaking.

On the other hand, Deacon from Powerline seemed much more impressed.

Posted by Mitch at January 21, 2004 05:09 AM