WASHINGTON (Feb. 1) - President Bush, opening the fall campaign season, is painting Democrats as defeatist for criticizing his march to war in Iraq and protectionist for questioning new trade deals and tax-cut extensions.
Grumbling Democrats looking for advantage in Bush's weak poll numbers and burgeoning scandals in GOP congressional ranks refused to cede center stage as the president laid out his 2006 priorities Tuesday night in his fifth State of the Union address.
Encumbered by some of the lowest approval ratings of his presidency, Bush hoped to take charge of the agenda at the start of a year that will see races for most of Congress and 36 governorships.
Bush has been beset by criticism that his optimistic messages of recent years haven't squared with the worries many Americans feel over high energy and health care costs, the costly and deadly Iraq war and continuing terrorist threats. He acknowledged the anxieties of "a period of consequence," while still expressing confidence in the future.
"Sometimes it can seem that history is turning a wide arc, toward an unknown shore," he told a joint session of Congress and a national prime-time television audience. "We will finish well."
As has become traditional, Bush was hoping to capitalize on the attention surrounding the year's biggest speech by delivering a recap Wednesday in Nashville, Tenn.
In Tuesday's speech, the president, hampered by big budget deficits, offered a modest program. He declared that America must break its long dependence on Mideast oil and rebuked critics of his stay-the-course strategy for the unpopular war in Iraq.
"America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world," Bush said.
Rejecting calls for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, he said, "There is no peace in retreat." He also slapped at those who complain he took the country to war on the erroneous grounds that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
"Hindsight alone is not wisdom," Bush said. "And second-guessing is not a strategy."
He pledged to maintain "a civil tone" in disputes with those in Congress who oppose his policies, like the nation's involvement in Iraq. But Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., complained Wednesday that "he says that all the time, and then his administration, through the vice president and the secretary of defense and others, says that anyone who criticizes the war, they imply they're not patriotic."
"I hope we're beyond that," Biden said on CBS's "The Early Show." "I think the president is in enough trouble politically and understands that it's time to really reach out."
Bush declared "the state of our union is strong and together we will make it stronger." But Democrats said Bush was living in a fantasyland.
"It just wasn't credible to hear him talk about making America more secure and honoring our troops or making America energy independent or making health care more affordable without hearing him explain why he's done just the opposite for the last five years," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
"Our country is ready for change and a new direction," Democratic Party head Howard Dean said.
Three-fourths of the people who watched the speech said they approve of the proposals made by Bush, according to a CBS News poll Tuesday night of 734 viewers. Those who watched the speech were more likely to be Republican, but only a third who saw the speech thought the president will be able to achieve the goals he mentioned.
Figures on the sidelines gave a look at the nation's sharp divide over Iraq. Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a fallen soldier whose summertime vigil near Bush's Texas ranch reinvigorated the anti-war movement, was arrested and escorted from the visitors section of the House gallery after causing a disruption just before the president spoke.
First lady Laura Bush, meanwhile, had among the guests in her box the relatives of a Marine killed in Iraq.
The partisan mood in the packed House chamber was evident as Bush turned, over halfway through his remarks, to Social Security, the subject of his signature initiative from last year's address that was indefinitely cast aside after even Republicans balked.
Democrats stood in unison to cheer the president's acknowledgment of congressional inaction on his proposal to add private investment accounts to the government retirement program -- an idea nearly universally opposed by Democrats.
Republicans then took their turn, delighting with loud applause in Bush's finger-wagging rejoinder that "the rising cost of entitlements is a problem that is not going away."
Bipartisanship erupted briefly as the president went on to make his modest call for the creation of a commission, made up of members from both parties, to examine the impact of the retirement of the baby boomer generation on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
He invited Democrats as well as Republicans to provide "good advice" on the mission in Iraq and praised "honorable people in both parties" who are proposing to strengthen ethical standards amid the influence-peddling scandal surrounding disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
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