Bush impressive in first major address

President George W. Bush’s address to Congress last night was well delivered and well received. It offers a constructive starting point to a divided Congress to rise above bitter partisan paralysis to show, as Bush suggested, that "public service can be noble."

It certainly made Bush look presidential, and that can’t hurt the collective confidence of a people not a little worried as a decade of economic boom wavers on the brink of recession.

The speech was an interesting combination of budget message, as advertised, and State of the Union report, calling for a range of items ranging from campaign reform (opposed, we seem to recall, by Bush during the recent campaign) to naming yet another commission to save Social Security, to "changing the tone" in Washington and, happily, a "patient’s bill of rights."

As is usual with such addresses, it was long on promises and sparce on details. But a large portion of that detail deficit should be made good today with the release of Bush’s new budget.

As anticipated, Bush’s speech focused on something he’s promised for 14 months: a $1.6 trillion tax cut over 10 years. It’s too soon to say whether Bush succeeded in selling the nation on the need for such a big tax cut. In the popular mind, it has remained a solution for which there is no obvious problem.

Polls indicate that Americans are partial to a tax cut, but not at the expense of balancing the budget, paying down the deficit, keeping Social Security and Medicare strong and viable, and keeping the military the world’s strongest.

And it remains to be seen whether Bush’s encouraging words about tax cuts for lower- and middle-class taxpayers will convince Americans who so far have been disenchanted with reports that Bush’s proposed package will disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

It is an open question whether the projected budget surplus, to which Bush points as the obvious reason for a tax cut, will survive a slipping economy and lawmakers eager to bend it to their own agendas. We must not forget the shambles Congress made of President Reagan’s tax cut in 1981, producing a soaring deficit from which we’re only now recovering.

Bush again promised to make education his top priority, which is a refreshing change from GOP presidents who promised to kill the Department of Education and remove the federal government from the scene altogether. It is, however, as yet unclear how Bush intends to assure local control of schools while "insisting on results"; giving spending discretion to states, yet offering better choices to parents and children in failing public schools.

A major question for the Bush administration is the direction for the vaunted American military establishment. Bush has promised much — costly items such as $5.7 billion in pay and benefits for military members and, of course, the national missile defenses, supremely expensive systems that so far don’t work.

Bush’s budget request for the Pentagon represents a modest increase over present spending, which suggests something must go. That will depend on a strategic review, only now beginning. We must hope that it targets obsolete and unneeded systems and bases, and not muscle and sinew.

Bush is right to ask that our nation’s defenses be restructured to reflect wars we may fight, not those we have fought; and that it be financed by spending determined by strategy, "and not the other way around."

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