I caught the president’s speech on CNN yesterday. Aside from a very strange laugh line about Osama bin Laden and suicide bombers (“He assures them that this is the road to paradise -- though he never offers to go along for the ride”), it was his standard-issue tough cowboy talk, filled with platitudes about taking on evil men. A tired reprise of the same talking points we’ve heard so many times -- and which, with each passing day (and each new death in Iraq), seem more and more detached from reality.
As he revved up to his sure-fire applause getter -- “We will never back down, never give in, and never accept anything less than complete victory” -- I closed my eyes and tried to imagine that he was not just repeating hackneyed bromides about taking on the very real threat of terrorism but was laying out a real plan for fighting the war on terror or was directing his passion to calling the nation to a great collective cause like achieving energy independence. I could hear it now: “When it comes to ending our reliance on oil, we will never back down, never give in, never accept anything less than complete victory.”
But then I opened my eyes and the hard, depressing reality of the Bush presidency set it.