Op-Ed: Dead Man Walking - Bush Makes His Last State of the Union Address

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With one of the lowest sustained approval rating of any President since statistics began to be kept the American people have already withdrawn life support from the the terminally ill Bush administration and last night's speech signaled the beginning of the shutting down process.

As he began his long walk it was apparent to everyone in the room as well as those at home that Bush is becoming increasingly irrelevant to American politics. Even the presidential candidates of his own party are campaigning on platforms of "change," which is a big slap in the face for any president, much less one whose personal mantra is "stay the course."

The sight of the once smirking and swaggering Bush glumly trudging to his doom was so heart rending that liberal Republican Congressman Chris Shays gave the waining chief executive a farewell kiss.

A president's last State of the Union is usually a time for him to try to shape a legacy for himself, and Bush tried desperately to do that. Within ten minutes of starting Bush made his seventh and final plea that his tax cuts for the rich be made permanent indicating to one and all his true priorities.

In the past Bush had swaggered and smirked as he made his appeal to naked greed, but this year he sounded more like Oliver Twist stammering "Please sir. I want more." However, having run the economy into the ditch it is not very likely that Bush is going to get his dream.

Trying to put the best face possible on his failure, Bush admitted that the economy was in trouble while at the same time trying to pretend that the responsibility for the last seven years of deficit spending and fiscal irresponsibility was someone else's, saying:

In the long run, Americans can be confident about our economic growth. But in the short run, we can all see that growth is slowing.

Bush, who has always shown a healthy appetite for Congressional pork, having signed budget after budget loaded down with Republican earmarks back when his party was in power, has suddenly developed an allergy to the other white meat of American politics.

Over the course of his presidency Bush has signed spending bills containing more than 55,000 earmarks worth more than $100 billion for projects, like Republican Senator Ted Stevens' famous "Bridge to nowhere," a structure almost as long as the Golden Gate bridge and as tall as the Brooklyn bridge which was to link the tiny town of Ketchikan Alaska to the almost uninhabited Gravina Island--where it just so happened the senator owned real estate.

When the press got wind of the boondoggle it was finally pulled from the budget but this year Senator Stevens is back with a "Ferry to nowhere" project, having slipped an $84 million appropriation into the defense budget directing the Navy to build a ferry that they have rejected in order to service a little used port in a remote part of his state--where the Senator still owns real estate.

Such projects were the bread and butter of the Republican Congress in power when Bush took office but now, in a last minute bid to rehabilitate his tarnished reputation as a spendthrift, Bush has is suddenly "shocked, shocked" to discover pork in his budgets. The man who has blazed new trails in the use of signing statements to short circuit the legislative process is now trying to pose as the champion of the process declaring:

If these items are truly worth funding, the Congress should debate them in the open and hold a public vote.

One wonders if there will be a public vote on Senator Stevens' pet project.

Abandoning the highly partisan tenor of past speeches Bush ticked off a list of proposals, none of which have a ghost of a chance of being passed in an election year.

As Bush stood before the assembled congress and the nation for his last State of the Union speech he stood alone. Even the candidates of his own party are essentially running against his legacy and against him. McCain's platform is that he saw what was wrong with Bush's war policy long before the President did and Mitt Romney's campaign slogan is that Washington is broken and that Bush broke it. His list of failures of the "Federal Government" is an exact match for the agenda of programs Bush has passed and the president's policies that have failed.

As Bush's speech droned on to its conclusion more than one legislator was caught peeking at their watch just as the entire nation is looking at its calendars, counting the days until the nation emerges from the long, dark tunnel of the Bush Administration. Until he leaves office the entire nation is a "dead man walking."