Like I said, Dubya really wants to be the President of Everybody, as evidenced by his lofty inaugural rhetoric.
The Washington Post seemed to encapsulate pretty much my knee-jerk reaction to Dubya's lofty phrases:
Steven Schier, a Carleton College political scientist who has edited academic volumes on the Clinton and Bush presidencies, said Bush's speech will take concrete meaning only when it is paired with the State of the Union address next month. "I don't think the speech was written in a way to be taken literally," he said. "If it was, you'd have to have more policy detail, but it's written at such a high level of abstraction it's hard to take issue with it. It's an attempt to link up with the great speeches and great concepts of the American past."
Yes, Steven Schier's comments hit a nerve because I wish I had a dime for every time I've heard learned men and women describe the Bible as something that was written to be allegorical; something not to be taken literally; something written in the abstract.
Then, of course, AlterNet's observations (John Nichols from The Nation) also hit home. Specifically:
President Bush has not lost his flair for irony.
Just as the president hit the point in his second inaugural address where he declared to the dissidents of the world that "when you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you," authorities were removing peaceful protesters from the regal one's line of sight.
Well, there are hundreds of thousands of words out there from pundits more adept than I examining the content and the unarticulated detail of those twenty-two inaugural minutes. So, I'll end this post here.
Can't wait for the State of the Union!
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