All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
Bearing "the imprint of a battle-scarred political veteran whose eyes are on survival, not posterity," Bill Clinton stepped up to the microphone, "exhorting the new Republican Congress to put aside 'partisanship, pettiness, and pride.'" Conspicuously overlooking his own political wounds to extend leadership to the nation, the president went on to offer a detailed outline of his political vision, raising a fresh call for "a new effort to rekindle a public spirit of community and civic virtue."
And then, four years later, he did it again.
Warm congratulations are owed to those political reporters who worked up the energy to write fresh new stories; the stuff from '95 ("Aides Say State of Union Will 'Reintroduce' Clinton" or "Clinton Seizes Moment, Puts GOP on Defensive") would have worked perfectly well this year, and we're close to 100 percent sure no one would have noticed -- certainly not those unfortunates forced to rely on the news to arrive at some understanding about what nominal head-of-state Bill Clinton had just said.
While the president slung every animal, vegetable, and mineral on his table into that overflowing pot of hobo stew, we listened along on the radio.
Clinton introduced Chicago slugger Sammy Sosa. And one of the news anchors covering the speech for National Public Radio burst into a frenetic run of explanatory whispering: Plays for the Cubs, hit more home runs than Roger Maris but not more home runs than Mark McGwire, does volunteer work in the Dominican Republic, was never really into Devo, looks sallow in aqua. But when the nation's top defendant mentioned radically unfamiliar policy initiatives -- Clinton's call for passage of something called the "African Growth and Opportunity Act" leapt out at us -- there was no help at all for the folks back home. And then the speech ended, and the pattern of uselessness held; the crack journalists at NPR quickly began interviewing students about their impression of the speech. How did it make you feel? How did the president look? (Was he foxy? Would you go for him?) Other news sources were equally helpful. A little research cleared things right up, though. The news archives of the Los Angeles Times -- which, unlike the news archives of its New York competitor, aren't completely useless, even if the LA Times itself is actually kind of shitty -- delivered a 10-month-old op-ed piece that made passing reference to the bill. The African Growth and Opportunity Act is "legislation that promotes private US trade with and investment in Africa and allows quota and duty-free imports from 48 African countries." Note that this tells you close to nothing at all. Are there corporate tax incentives? If so, how generous? Is there a direct aid component? Does the act specifically address the problem of trading around the current instability and political violence in central and western Africa? What about Libya? And will there be a new Disney theme park in Kigali? But this is still more information than you got in your morning newspaper the day after 43.5 million people watched the president call for its passage into law.
Politicians walk on a road that disintegrates behind them as they advance; they continually discover Brave New Ideas like this bold call from Clinton on Tuesday night: "To ensure that our classrooms are truly places of learning, all states and school districts must adopt and implement discipline policies.... If we do these things -- end social promotion, turn around failing schools, build modern ones, support qualified teachers, promote innovation, competition, and discipline -- we will begin to meet our generation's historic responsibility to create 21st century schools." Classrooms where children learn something?
And it's not just schools, either. Second runner-up for the we-must-dare-to-love-our-mothers prize: "We must bring prosperity back to the family farm." But what about the powerful pro-rural-poverty lobby? What about all those farmers who prefer to starve to death?
For folks back in the city, Clinton proposes "rapid response teams to help towns where factories have closed," about which he said not one specific word. Considering the source, we're seeing a network of empaths, shock teams of emotional paratroopers ready at a moment's notice to feel for the economically devastated. Get me a chopperload of crocodile tears, on the double! For all the uselessly vague discoveries that schools should be good and farms should provide the most benefit to farmers when they're profitable, a very real shamelessness emerged elsewhere in Clinton's bloated speech. "The bombing of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania reminds us of the risks faced every day by those who represent America to the world," the president said Tuesday night. "Let's give them our support, the safest possible workplaces, and the resources they need so America can continue to lead."
Before the 7 August bombings, however -- as a pair of reports by government commissions made perfectly clear less than a month before the State of the Union Address -- the US ambassador to Kenya, Prudence Bushnell, had repeatedly warned that security was horribly inadequate at the embassy there. No one ever paid her the least bit of attention.
As an 8 January New York Times story explains, "Administration officials said members of the two panels were startled by how little had been accomplished in improving security in American embassies since a wide-ranging investigation of the subject in 1985 by a government panel led by Bobby R. Inman, a retired admiral and the former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence." Ignore the alarm for years; then, after the attack, step forward and let everyone see you taking the initiative to sound the alarm.
One more? State of the Union Address, 1995: "From the day I took office, I pledged that our nation would maintain the best-equipped, best-trained, and best-prepared military on Earth. We have, and they are.... But to make sure our military is ready for action, and to provide the pay and the quality of life the military and their families deserve, I'm asking Congress to add $25 billion in defense spending over the next six years."
State of the Union Address, 1999: "It is time to reverse the decline in defense spending that began in 1985. Since April, together we have added nearly $6 billion to maintain our readiness. My balanced budget calls for a sustained increase over the next six years for readiness and modernization, and pay and benefits for our troops." Lather, rinse, repeat.
Time to turn on the radio, we're thinking, and hear about the way some ordinary people reacted to the president's speech.
