The new reality
The President has finished his State of the Union message and Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, has just finished the Democratic response. What's clear to me is that Bush and his most diehard supporters have not yet accepted the judgment of the American people last November. The American people would have voted Bush out if they could, but since they couldn't, they handed Congress to Democrats like Sen. Webb, who, as Webb put it so well, will "show him [Bush] the way" if he doesn't reverse course on the disastrous Iraq War.
Webb is a former Republican who was Secretary of the Navy during the Reagan Administration. He defeated the odious Virginia Republican Senator George Allen in the election by a margin of 1 percent, a victory that gave Democrats control of the Senate. He ran into a bit of nonsense controversy after his election when he attended a reception for new Senators at the White House. He tried to avoid having his picture taken with Bush, whom he had criticized often in the campaign. Bush sought him out, and despite having been warned by aides to tread carefully because Webb's Marine son had narrowly escaped death in Iraq recently, said, "How's your boy?" Webb replied that he wanted his son and all U.S. troops out of Iraq. Bush then pointedly said, "That's not what I asked. How's your boy?" Webb, angered, said later he felt like punching Bush for the provocation.
Conservative commentators and bloggers heaped scorn on Webb for his supposed effrontery to the King, but he didn't apologize. Nor should he have. In his speech last night, Webb said Bush led the U.S. into the Iraq War under false pretenses. Sounds about right.
I found the Democratic body language fascinating during the President's speech last night. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was in the Speaker's chair directly behind and to the right of Bush, while Vice President Cheney was in his usual position to the right. You could quite easily gauge what parts of Bush's program the Democrats will and won't accept by what Pelosi applauded during the speech. She sat on her hands during most of Bush's comments on health care, especially when he said that most Americans should only be served by private health insurance companies, meaning not a government single-payer program. There were many portions of the speech where Republicans were standing and cheering and the Democrats sat stonily motionless.
Does this all mean the Democrats have their groove back? I sure hope so. This is no time for "bipartisan" compromise on issues where the American people have clearly spoken. Perhaps they can't overturn a veto because of the narrow Senate margin of control, but at least they will have tried, and they will have forced Bush to compile a record of vetoing popular legislation (most likely embryonic stem cell research and maybe minimum wage) that the next Republican Presidential candidate will have to live with. As Sen. Webb said, the Democrats must show Bush the way if he refuses to listen to reason.