From today's Note: What kind of reaction could they have been expecting to the State of the Union other than the one that they got? The White House has seemed strangely tone-deaf lately...
It's now tempting to treat the President's inaugural address like the 1986 season of "Dallas" that was Pam Ewing's dream — something that we all THOUGHT we experienced, but that — it turns out — didn't really happen.
To review: the very, very meticulous, media-savvy Bush White House had the President give a huge, historic speech in which there was unambiguously only one lead/headline possible — the President was adapting a new paradigmatic extension of the Bush Doctrine that called for fundamentally remaking America's relationships around the world based on the supreme value of supporting democratization.
For more than 24 hours, all the Gang of 500 talked about was how big a deal all this was, how unachievable, how weighted with implications for Saudi Arabia, Russia, etc, etc, etc.
Then the White House started background sessions (supplemented by a "surprise" weekend briefing room drop-by by 41) in which they said that this was "nothing new," "long-term," "broad goals," etc., etc., etc.
So: the President was for democracy on Jan. 19, on Jan. 20, and today. But he didn't really mean to suggest any new policy in his historic, ambitious inaugural address.
Dan Froomkin has more on the administration's efforts to walk the speech back in his White House Briefing column.
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