January 29, 2008

The state of the State of the Union

I'm not sure how many people made it through the almost hour long speech from President Bush but if you noticed nothing else, you had to notice the ridiculous amount of hand clapping and standing ovations. I'm not saying that what President Bush was saying didn't deserve an applause but I mean seriously, every 2-3mins?

Now I know that the State of the Union address is typically used to recap the president's term, discuss the state of our country and to lay out plans for the future on pressing issues, all of which President Bush did but he also wasn't holding back from letting the Democratic members of Congress know they are cramping his style. As I sat and watched this spectacle play out, there were a couple things I noticed...

1) The cheers of the "manly" hoots and hollers I found to be somewhat funny and reminiscent of a college sporting event with a large section of frat boys.

2) The political term "across the aisle" became visibly apparent to me as one section of Congress found themselves clapping and giving standing ovations hardly at all. The partisan divide was painfully obvious and made me wonder how many things get pushed aside because of that giant chasm the size of a movie theater aisle.

The whole thing seemed to be a little theatrical but I'm hoping and praying that our leaders in government will start or continue (depending on your perspective) to address the basic needs of not only the citizens of the U.S. but also people around the world regardless of their ethnicity, religion, bank account, education or political views.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

I did not watch the State of the Union speech last night, not because I'm a bad citizen but because President Bush is, as most would agree, a horrible public speaker. So, I cannot comment on anything you said about the address, but I did have the fortune of seeing both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's reactions to it. On The Daily Show, Stewart showed the last line of the last seven State of the Union speeches, and they all were, "The state of the Union is strong" (with the exception of two: 1) "The state of the Union is confident and strong", 2) "The state of the Union is strong and will continue to grow stronger." Hmm...one would think an Ivy League grad would have a wider vocabulary (or that at least the person who writes his speeches would). I mean, yeah, the president has much more important responsibilities than giving the State of the Union address, but it would be cool if he could get a few eloquent words out every now and then.