SOTU-blogging

Here’s the text of the speech. I can’t match James Joyner, Glenn Reynolds, Patrick Belton, or Stephen Green on real-time State of the Union blogging. Plus, I’ve been historically bad at reading these speeches. I used to be bored silly by Clinton’s SOTUs, but he always got a public opinion bump from them. My quick assessment was similar to Joyner: “a fairly boring speech.” Compared to Bush’s last two SOTU speeches, however — the 2001 Axis of Evil speech and the 2002 “sixteen little words” speech — a little boring might be good. And after seeing the Democratic response, it’s easy to see why neither Nancy Pelosi nor Tom Daschle threw their hat into the ring to run for president. Hell, Howard “YEEEEEEEEEAAAAH” Dean looked better. I thought the one effective line was about the Patriot Act:

Key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year. (MOCK APPLAUSE FROM DEMOCRATS) The terrorist threat will not expire on that schedule.

Beyond that, there was a brazenness to when Bush said:

We’re seeking all the facts. Already, the Kay report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations.

As Andrew Sullivan pointed out in an interview:

I don’t think we can over-look the failure of the US to find tangible stockpiles of WMDs. It’s a big embarrassment, and a big dent in the pre-emption doctrine. It doesn’t change my view of the war, but it does shift my position on pre-emption. If our intelligence is that bad, then it seems to me hard to base potential wars upon it.

Oh, and one last thing — what the hell are steroids in professional sports doing in the friggin’ State of the Union?