("...Almost as soon as the speech was made, the administration scrambled to reassure its Saudi friends/enemies/evil-doers/clients that the president didn’t really mean it....")
The Sunday Times February 05, 2006
Andrew Sullivan
My personal recipe for getting through a state of the union address is a gin and tonic and an ephedra (a herbal stimulant that’s legal again in the US). Aware of the crushing tedium of such speeches, their writers have learnt over the years to insert a couple of lines every now and again just to see if the audience has already slipped into a coma.
Bill Clinton told the world that “the era of big government is over”. I vaguely remember spluttering what was left of my drink at the time. The more counterintuitive a statement the better. Clinton would have woken more of us up if he’d pledged a tax on condoms. But for some reason, in eight addresses chock-full of little proposals, he missed the opportunity.
And so this year George W Bush told Americans that they were “addicted to oil”. It was like being warned by Kate Moss of the dangers of Red Bull. There was a brief flurry of excitement, a sudden rubbing of the collective eyes, but then, almost as quickly, a yawn.
Yes, the guy from Texas whose energy bill gave oodles to big oil made a feint to the green caucus. No one should be too alarmed. This president has never asked Americans to make any sacrifices in the war on terror; he has never vetoed a spending bill; he has never raised a tax; he has added more than $20 trillion to America’s long-term debt in a mere five years. He isn’t actually going to ask people to use less oil, let alone adopt what was, one should sheepishly recall, a central plank of John Kerry’s election manifesto.
(more at link below)
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