FARAI CHIDEYA, host:
From NPR News, this is NEWS & NOTES. I'm Farai Chideya.
President Bush gave his final State of the Union address last night. He made the case that there's been progress in Iraq and tried to reassure Americans that the economy would recover.
With the president's low approval ratings and a dramatic presidential election year overshadowing him, are Americans paying attention to his message?
To give us their perspective, we've got Melissa Harris Lacewell. She's a political science and African-American studies professor at Princeton University. And Deroy Murdock. He is a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
Welcome.
Mr. DEROY MURDOCK (Media Fellow, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University): Hi, there.
Professor MELISSA HARRIS LACEWELL (Political Science, African-American Studies, Princeton University): Thank you for having us.
CHIDEYA: So, let's get your responses to the president's State of the Union. Melissa, how did this compare to past addresses by the president?
Prof. LACEWELL: Well, I mean, in some ways, it didn't have any of the fun things that we progressives like to make fun of, right? No dog-whistle politics on the evangelicals and, you know, for the most part, except for that sort of gleeful first 15 minutes where he slapped Congress around a little bit.
It was actually stunningly boring. He didn't use this as an opportunity to really either crow very much about what he believed to be the strengths of his presidency, nor to say, you know, really very much about what he imagines his legacy is going to be. Instead, it was, you know, very sort of restrained, you know, saying a little bit about the surge, a little bit about shopping our way out of the mortgage crisis. But for the most part, it's just - in this particular election year, with so much exciting politics going on - sort of boring.
CHIDEYA: Deroy, what do you think?
Mr. MURDOCK: I thought it was very modest, programmatically. I guess this is probably a reflection of the fact that the president understands he's in his eighth of eight years. His is now one voice among many as we've got a wide open Republican and Democratic fields for president.
And, of course, the Democrats are running Congress. So rather than come in with a bold and imaginative and innovative - a list of innovative agenda items, he came in with a number of, I think, interesting, pleasant, small ideas such as - I think the best one is the idea of this executive order that would limit the ability of the bureaucracy to spend money on earmarks that are not actually in the legislation that Congress votes on, rather than in these sort of little reports the chairman put out. Most of earmarked stuff is in that kind of language. And I think this executive order will stop that.
He talked about a $300-million program of Pell grants for kids, which I assume would be some sort of a small school voucher program. Another good idea, I thought, was letting veterans who have not used up all their G.I. bill education benefits pass that money along to their spouses or their children. Also a good idea, but not exactly anything quite as bold or ambitious is his effort to personalize Social Security or his multi-hundred, you know, hundred billion dollar plus tax cut proposals we've seen in the past.
So I think he's basically responding to the reality that his party is not in control, that his tenure is winding down. And he could ask for Congress for a lot of things, not get them, or perhaps ask for smaller things and maybe succeed on a smaller scale.
CHIDEYA: And, of course, the Social Security not being able to advance, tax cuts having advanced. Let's go to a little bit about President Bush talking about the economy. Here's a listen.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: As we meet tonight, our economy is undergoing a period of uncertainty. At kitchen tables across our country, there is a concern about our economic future.
In the long run, Americans can be confident about our economic growth. But in the short run, we can all see that that growth is slowing.
CHIDEYA: Now, Melissa, we spoke yesterday with economist Julianne Malveaux about whether or not a proposal that, in broad strokes, was agreed on by the White House and the House of Representatives really did enough for people who were working class - seniors, people who needed extension of unemployment benefits. Well, as it turns out, yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee came back with a package that did address some of those issues. And there's now a competition between the White House and the House and then the Senate.
How is this going to affect the president's ability to shape the debate over what a stimulus package should look like?
Prof. LACEWELL: Well, I mean, certainly, Julianne Malveaux, as the economist, is very clear-eyed on this. I will say that part of the problem is now we have the Congress and the president fighting to do this stimulus package, which is, ultimately, a little more than, you know, how many different kinds of groups are we going to send to the mall on Saturday. Will it be just the middle-class? Will it be the middle-class with their grandmothers?
The big question is, how are we going to fundamentally address the underlying crisis which we are facing, which has to do with home ownership and the mortgage crisis? There are other very clear-eyed economists who are making very strong suggestions that what needs to happen is a big exogenous shock by the Feds in which the Feds will cut rates about half of what they've already done, down to below 2 percent, at least in the short term, in order to change the kind of impact that these variable interest rates are having on families. And it will do it without, again, undermining the budget that we need to be operating with at the federal level.
So, you know, yeah. Are they going to fight over this? Sure. But they're doing it because there's some political capital here, not so much because it will save us from the crisis that we're in.
CHIDEYA: Deroy, let me frame this in terms of ideology. When people say things like liberal, progressive, conservative - you know, there's so many meanings. And there's the whole question of fiscal conservatism and whether or not President Bush actually lived up to the idea of fiscal conservatism when this government has spent so much money on things ranging from the war to other initiatives.
How does a stimulus package fit into an idea of fiscal conservatism? Is this something that's in line with what the administration wants or with what Republicans or conservatives want?
Mr. MURDOCK: I don't think it fits in very well at all, unfortunately. I find a couple of things about the stimulus package kind of puzzling and frustrating if someone who considers himself a fiscal conservative.
The first is that the ideas that it's supposed to be fairly immediate and temporary to address the concerns people have right now with the housing market and the economy apparently slowing down. If this package were approved this week, I've heard that the rebate checks will start coming out in May. So we're all supposed to sit around here in January and wait four more months to be stimulated. And I don't know about you, but sitting around, waiting four months to be stimulated does not sound very appealing to me.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. MURDOCK: Number one, and number two, what we really need is not some, essentially, a Washington, D.C., giving each of us a little gift card or like a gift check, which we can go out and go shopping. We'll go out and buy something nice and pleasant, and within a week or two, what else happens? What we needed to do is change immediately the long-term incentives for people to work, save, invest and produce. And you do that by cutting taxes, by deregulating, by changing the nature of people to, say, okay, I will open up a factory; I will hire more people; I will expand my payroll; I will open this new store; I will go produce and market this new product.
And you don't do that by giving people checks for three or four, $500, say, you go out and buy something nice or go stick it in the bank.
This to me does not look that much different from George McGovern's Democrat program of 1972, where if you vote for McGovern and he got in and became president, everybody goes - would get a check, I think it was for a thousand dollars or something like that. This seems to be kind of the same idea only pushed by a Republican president and not even as much money as McGovern was pushing himself.
So I guess I'd call this program basically McGovern-light.
CHIDEYA: Okay. Well, I want to turn to another big topic, the war. In just a few weeks, we're going to mark the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq. Let's listen to how the president framed things.
Pres. BUSH: Last month, Osama bin Laden released a tape in which he railed against Iraqi tribal leaders who have turned on al-Qaida and admitted that coalition forces are growing stronger in Iraq. Ladies and gentlemen, some may deny the surge is working, but among the terrorists, there is no doubt. Al-Qaida is on the run in Iraq, and this enemy will be defeated.
(Soundbite of applause)
CHIDEYA: Deroy, this is definitely going to be one of the biggest issues that the president is evaluated on in terms of legacy. What is he leaving behind? Is he leaving behind the al-Qaida on the run, as he argues, or a country in a war that we can't figure out what to do about?
Mr. MURDOCK: I think we'll see in the next - in the months ahead whether the progress we've seen as a result of the surge, the decrease in violence, the increased political stability, the not-full-blown reconciliation among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, but some improvement in that area, if all those things congeal and continue in advance or if there's backsliding.
I think, at the moment, it looks as if al-Qaida is on the run in Iraq. Bin laden just did - put out a tape a couple of weeks ago, basically castigating the Sunnis and the Shiites for getting along as well as they are and the Sunnis for cooperating with the government and so on. And I believe bin Laden's son actually came out and sort of attacked his dad and said, you know, give peace a chance. Now, this wouldn't happen if al-Qaida were on the move. So I think that they appeared to be in retreat, and that's a good thing. I think the surge is a big part of this.
And if Iraq can calm down to be stabilized and serve as a model for its neighbors - not Switzerland or Holland for sure, but perhaps, a regional Mexico if you will - that would be a big step over where - a huge step over where it was before, which is as a blitzkrieg(ph) dictatorship.
And if that actually happens, I think it will - history will show that president Bush's policy was indeed a success despite the bloodshed and the tremendous losses of human life and injury of Americans and certainly people in the ground in Iraq as well.
CHIDEYA: Melissa, let's throw something else into the mix. The president has taken a harsh stance against Iran, but he didn't address its nuclear ambitions in his speech. He also didn't talk about North Korea. In the big picture, what message does that send about what the U.S. is and isn't willing to do in the final months of the Bush presidency?
Prof. LACEWELL: Well, I mean, I think part of this has to do with what the U.S. is and is not capable of doing. You know, so many of these things are tied together in these very quirky ways. So the notion of getting support and a standing ovation about what bin Laden is putting out on his tapes is quirky given that it means bin Laden is still out there making tapes. And if there was one thing against which we should measure a response to 9/11, it should be about the capture of bin Laden, not the capture and hanging of Saddam Hussein.
Further, this idea, for example, of the young men who are - and young women who are going to give over their benefits to their families because they're not able to use them - part of the reason they're not able to use them is because they're doing five tours of duty in Iraq. They don't have time to go to school. So these things which look like kind of the president doing something big or being aggressive or making this sort of largesse are really about his fundamental policy failures. So he's not bringing up these other very serious threats to the U.S., both sort of threats to our understanding of our standing in the world as also - and as well as potential military threats, because there really is almost nothing we can do about it from a military perspective.
CHIDEYA: All right.
Prof. LACEWELL: They are diplomatic things, but not military ones.
CHIDEYA: All right. Melissa, Deroy, we're going to have to leave it there. Thanks so much.
Mr. MURDOCK: Thank you, Farai.
Prof. LACEWELL: Thanks.
CHIDEYA: We heard from Melissa Harris Lacewell. She's a political science and African-American studies professor at Princeton University. Also, Deroy Murdock, a media fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. And he joined us from New York.
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