President Bush started his State of the Union address with a fair amount of grace and dignity on Tuesday night, but slipped quickly when he said, “I congratulate the Democrat majority.”
As William F. Buckley and many others have pointed out, the proper adjectival form of “Democrat” is “Democratic.” Buckley observed that this usage “has the effect of injecting politics into language, and should be avoided.”
But language has never been Bush’s strong point, and neither is originality. For at least 30 years, every president has said something about about how we need to “reduce our dependence on foreign oil.” The line draws applause, and then our dependence continues to grow.
The refreshing change last week was in the opposition response to Bush’s speech. Most years, that presentation ranks right up there watching paint dry. But this year, the Democrats did well, perhaps too well, in selecting Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia to deliver the response.
They did well because Webb quickly moved to “two areas where our respective parties have largely stood in contradiction.” Regarding our economy with record corporate profits, he observed that “Wages and salaries for our workers are at all-time lows as a percentage of national wealth” as “Our manufacturing base is being dismantled and sent overseas.”
As for Iraq, “The president took us into this war recklessly.” Webb drew on his family’s three generations of military service. “We owed them our loyalty, as Americans, and we gave it. But they owed us – sound judgment, clear thinking, concern for our welfare, a guarantee that the threat to our country was equal to the price we might be called upon to pay in defending it.”
Webb conveyed more in a few minutes than I’ve heard in the combined political speeches of this millennium. He didn’t dance around; he drew some lines and said that if President Bush does not act in the national interest, “we will be showing him the way.”
That’s why the Democrats may have done too well in picking him to deliver the response. The prominent Democrats running for president, in comparison to Webb, all seem calculated, solicitous, obligatory, anything but fighters for what they say is important, whereas Webb comes out swinging. He’s a warrior, like his hero, Andrew Jackson.
Webb for president? He has an excellent resume, including a stint as secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan. His combat record should be immune to the Swift-Boating slime-mongers.
It’s an engaging fantasy, but you have to consider the tragedy of Sen. John McCain, just seven years ago the straight-talking scarred veteran who looked ready to lead the Republican Party toward common sense and away from the religious right. Now he’s busy pandering to them.
So it might also be with Webb if he decided to run for President and surrounded himself with advisers, consultants and strategists, all looking for ways to avoid saying anything of substance while designing his wardrobe.
That seems to be the nature of American politics these days, and Webb would likely best serve where he is, as an eloquent voice in the Senate.
But it is fun to imagine a 2008 Democratic convention in Denver where there’s no clear winner after the primaries among Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and all the others, and on the fourth ballot, the party turns to the battle-tested junior senator from Virginia.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
