Kim Jong Il: From 'Evil' to MIA

For the second straight year, President Bush made no mention of North Korea in his State of the Union speech. The silence about the onetime member of the 'axis of evil' underscores one of the president's biggest foreign-policy shifts -- his decision to seek a negotiated end to Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programs, rather than trying to squeeze the regime into submission. The arc of Bush's State of the Union comments on the reclusive communist regime reflects a realization that some thorny foreign-policy issues require a softer touch. -- Glenn Kessler