Hail to the Speech?

There was no mention of the word Iraq, and any reference to domestic policy went by in a flash. George W. Bush's paen to freedom and liberty was written to send a clear, simple message -- the war president, still at war -- and written as well for the history books.

Historians are fickle, though, and I challenge anyone to instantly recollect a single line from the inaugurals of LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Bush 41 or Clinton. (Reagan did have the applause line that "government is the problem," although he left it largely intact.)

Television turned the event into a blabathon, which was perhaps understandable with so much time to fill between the speech, the Capitol luncheon, the redcoats, the parade and the balls. And Bushies sure were in demand: Karl Rove, Dan Bartlett, Ari Fleischer all over CNN, Andy Card popping up simultaneously on three network morning shows.

It was Brian Williams's first inauguration as anchor, and Dan Rather's last.

I couldn't help wondering, what was Trent Lott thinking as he emceed the events for a man who got him dumped as majority leader? Who volunteered Lott for the job, anyway?

But the speech (a bit longer than George Washington's 135 words, but not overly long) is what generates headlines. Let's start with the straight news leads:

USA Today: "President George W. Bush was sworn in for a second term Thursday and vowed to continue to fight terrorism with a sweeping campaign to promote democracy across the globe, a task he cast as 'the calling of our time.' "

Los Angeles Times: "George Walker Bush was inaugurated for a second presidential term today, building a ceremony as old as the Republic into a salute to his goal of a new liberty around the globe."

Wall Street Journal: "President Bush asserted to the world that time is running out for regimes that flout the basic tenets of democracy, as he took the oath of office for his second term."

Philadelphia Inquirer: "On a sunny but chill winter day, in a capital city filled with cheering supporters, heavily armed police and barricaded streets, George Walker Bush swore for the second time to discharge the duties of the presidency, then proclaimed an ambitious new foreign-policy doctrine as America's global mission."

Now for some analysis. Todd Purdum in the New York Times: "President Bush began his second term without uttering the words 'Iraq,' 'Afghanistan,' 'Sept. 11' or 'terrorism.' But those omissions seemed to be precisely the point, allowing him to cast the crises and controversies of his first four years and the ones he welcomes in the next as a seamless struggle in defense of the nation's founding creed: freedom. . . .

"There remains a wide gulf between his eloquent aspirations and the realities on the ground, from Capitol Hill to the Middle East. Executing his ideas will not be easy, at home or abroad. His tone was proud, unapologetic, even defiant, and his emphasis on foreign policy muffled his outline of the domestic agenda that he and his aides have said is so important to the success of his second term."

Michel Tackett in the Chicago Tribune: "This time, for George W. Bush, the inescapable theme on Inauguration Day was 'more.' In ways highly personal -- more wrinkles, more gray hair -- and in ways grandly political -- more peril ahead, more need for assertiveness and possibly more need to use force -- the president who came to office in humble pose spoke Thursday of a second term of global ambition."

Peter Canellos in the Boston Globe:

"George W. Bush's soaring second inaugural address was an expansion and amplification of the themes in his post-Sept. 11 address to Congress, linking the fight against terrorism to the nation's manifest destiny to promote freedom around the world.

"The address harked back to earlier calls for a strong US presence in the world from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin D. Roosevelt, and was forceful enough to blow away any shards of the isolationist wing of the Republican Party, to which Bush himself expressed fealty just four years ago.

"Combined with the president's delivery, which was even more clipped and serious than usual, and the protesters heard in the background, the speech seemed likely to reinforce impressions of the president as forceful and resolute in the eyes of his supporters, but stubborn and repetitive in the eyes of detractors."

Doyle McManus in the L.A. Times: "For more than a century, presidents have wrestled with the recurring conflict between America's democratic ideals and its real-world interests -- interests that sometimes led the U.S. into alliances with unpalatable dictators.

"In his inaugural address Thursday, President Bush boldly declared that debate over. From now on, he said, the principal goal of the United States must be to promote democracy everywhere in the world, even where that may mean instability in the short run."

John Harris in The Washington Post: "By now, four years into a presidency that has reshaped American politics and shaken the world, perhaps no one should be surprised by George W. Bush's ambition. Even so, the 21-minute address he delivered at the Capitol yesterday was startling in its reach.

"His pledges to promote liberty and aid the oppressed, along with predictions of the United States leading the world to the ultimate triumph of democracy over tyranny in every land, were issued with some of the most expansive and lyrical language Bush has summoned. Several times he invoked God, and he regularly borrowed ideas, imagery and phrases from such looming predecessors as Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan."

Some online reactions, starting with National Review's Jonah Goldberg:

"But I do think Bush was surprisingly flat in his delivery. I think he was going for somber and sailed just a bit further past that to sedated. I do think that whatever its merits or demerits, this speech will end up being passed around in places like Iran like Samizdat for years to come. In that sense, I think it was a brilliant bit of foreign policy masked as domestic rhetoric."

Slate's Fred Kaplan: "President Bush's inaugural address today was a flimsy, shallow speech -- eloquent, even graceful, but in the service of clichés and slogans, not ideas or policies. The theme was attractive: 'freedom' and the necessity to spread it to around the world, not just for its own sake but to protect those who already enjoy it. Tyranny spawns resentment, hatred, and violence; freedom is the force of history that breaks tyranny. . . .

"But George W. Bush is not John F. Kennedy and, more to the point, 2005 is not 1961. It is doubtful that even Kennedy's words -- so flush with idealism at the time -- would have come off so stirringly had they been written, say, eight years later, at the height of the Vietnam War. They would have raised questions, set off alarm bells. And so should Bush's paraphrasings in the middle of the present war in Iraq."

Andrew Sullivan: "Who could disagree with the stirring, elegant and somewhat sweeping address the president just gave? Well: here's a rough shot. The speech was a deep rebuke to conservative foreign policy realists. Its fundamental point, it seems to me, is that security is only possible through the expansion of liberty abroad. In the long run, that's indisputable. In the short run, there are sometimes trade-offs to be made. What Bush was saying was that he will not trade liberty for security. Translation: he will stick to the democratization of Iraq. That was the main point of the address on the major policy issue in front of us. In that sense, it was an old-style liberal speech, about as far from the conservative tradition in foreign policy as can be imagined. . . .

"And, of course, the relationship of rhetoric to reality is, as always with Bush, problematic. How do you reconcile the expansion of freedom with Bush's expansion of government? How do you square domestic freedom with the curtailment of civil liberties in a war on terror?"

Dan Kennedy: "First, he linked the war in Iraq -- and possibly wars to come, since he never actually used the word 'Iraq' -- to an American mission of spreading liberty across the world. Second, he wrapped up his domestic agenda in that quest for liberty, casting proposals such as the privatization of Social Security in the gauzy haze of freedom.

"It was a skillful performance, but that was to be expected. Anyone who still thinks that Bush is going to fumble his way through the prepared text of a major speech just hasn't been paying attention for the past four years.

"To the extent that one speech can help shape the national conversation, it was also incredibly dangerous. The projection of American values is not just a neoconservative idea -- it was a central tenet of the muscular liberalism of the pre-Vietnam Democratic Party as well. But the Bush administration's planning and execution to date has been so arrogant and inept that it is terrifying to contemplate what he's got in mind next. Iran, perhaps?"

Wonkette rates one of the anchors:

"It's days like today that bring out the best in Chris Matthews. And by 'best' we mean, rambling, incoherent, insane brilliance. He's like Rain Man, can't help but comment on any and every thing set before him. Here's Chris on . . . the White House floor: 'Look at this great, great camera angle . . . Look at that shiny, shiny floor. . . . ' We hear they use Pledge!

"We think he realized that sounded kind of gay, because he followed with this Larry Summers-esque comment to Joe Scarborough: 'And look at the girls. . . . Don't you wish you were 21 Joe, and could hang out with them?'"

In the New Republic, former Clinton speechwriter David Kusnet looks for a change in tone:

"As President Bush begins his second term, he's likely to sound less affable and more argumentative, reflecting the rhetoric of a new chief speechwriter who has constantly criticized the American Catholic clergy for being too tough on capitalism and too soft on abortion. Bush's second inaugural address will be the last speech written under the direction of Michael Gerson, who has drafted the president's major addresses since the 2000 campaign. A mild-mannered evangelical Christian, Gerson gave voice to Bush's 'compassionate conservatism.'

"Now Gerson is moving up to a policy position, and he's being replaced by William McGurn, a former columnist for The New York Post, chief editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal, senior editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review, and Washington bureau chief for National Review. To borrow a phrase from Gerson, McGurn most likely will 'change the tone' of Bush's speeches.

"Gerson made Bush sound like a preacher, but McGurn made his name as a polemicist. He's a Catholic conservative, with a distinctive intellectual pedigree. Liberal Catholics such as E. J. Dionne and even some conservative Catholics such as Pat Buchanan have criticized capitalism's excesses for weakening families and communities. But McGurn favors free trade, opposes even the most basic regulations of corporate conduct, and has harsh words for an American labor movement that the Catholic Church has historically supported. . . .

"Like Gerson, McGurn is a graceful writer, capable of crafting clear and original prose. But unlike Gerson, McGurn is also a brawler who loves to take hard shots at his adversaries and even his allies. He attacked Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu for opposing school vouchers but sending her own kids to private schools."

Is Condi critic Barbara Boxer now the Great Liberal Hope? Here's Tim Grieve in Salon:

"For the second time this month, California's junior senator has thrown a wrench into the works of the second-term White House machine. She did it two weeks ago, when she was the only senator to object to the certification of electoral votes from Ohio. And she did it this week, on the eve of George W. Bush's second inauguration, when she put hard questions to Rice and then cast a committee vote against her confirmation. Ohio's electoral votes were eventually counted, and Rice will eventually be confirmed. But largely because of Boxer, the road has been rockier than the White House had expected; the vote on Rice's confirmation will be delayed until next week so Senate Democrats can have time to debate it.

"Boxer may have a reputation for tilting at windmills, but she bristles at the thought that she is engaging in protests that only delay the inevitable. 'This isn't a protest,' she told Salon Wednesday as she described her decision to confront Rice. 'I'm just doing my job of "advice and consent." ' . . .

"Boxer's in-your-face approach has given some comfort to Democrats around the country who feel defeated as the Republicans celebrate inauguration week. Boxer says it's all part of a long process, one that will someday see the Democrats in control again."

Where are the bloggers? That's what journalism maven Jay Rosen is wondering after the PR geniuses at Ketchum blamed Armstrong Williams for not disclosing the $241K that the firm passed on to him to pitch Bush's education policy:

"How is it that one of the leading firms in the profession signs a contract with the Federal government guaranteeing that one of the biggest sins in the profession (payola) will go down, and even puts the arrangement in writing? Maybe it's not John Grisham territory, but there's enough there to make a person curious.

"Bloggers are supposed to be a little more curious than most. They are supposed to apply a second degree of scrutiny as they do 'their job' in the new ecosystem of news. When the press pack goes that-a-way they ought to look this-a-way more. And they should be alert to events in the moral life of the people whose world they chronicle.

"It isn't possible for Ketchum to claim ignorance of the rules the way Armstrong Williams did. Nor is it possible for people in the industry to dismiss Ketchum as a bit player or wayward individual. Remember Karen Ryan? That was a Ketchum contract too. Maybe this is the way things are done all the time in PR today. It's one of the most plausible explanations we have for the Ketchum contract, the apparent fraudulence of which is roughly parallel to the dubious memos in the Dan Rather case. But there we had bloggers who refused to let go."

I guess Rather is a more tempting target than Ketchum.