All FOUR chapters of the PARIS Travelogue, "We'll Always Have Paris" is on the Secret Decoder Ring page.
The State of the Union address - short-handed here in Washington as the SOTU - is mandated by Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution:
He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.
Democrats, for their part, spent the two days leading up to the speech in a full throated roar hoping to have some impact on the way the speech was perceived by the press corps and, by echo, by the general public.
David Yepsen is the senior political reporter for the Des Moines Register and so becomes an oft-quoted source every four years when the visits to Iowa begin in advance of the Iowa Caucuses.
Yepsen, however, is smart ALL the time and told me several years ago that one of the dangers candidates - especially secondary candidates - run, is that they get to Iowa about a year out and by the time the Caucuses are actually held, voters are tired of hearing the same old message.
National Democrats are facing the same "Catch-22" in attacking President Bush.
On the one hand, if they don't say or do anything in opposition to the President they will certainly suffer the same fate in 2004 as they did in 2002.
On the other hand, if they continue their attacks on President Bush for the next 20-plus months with the same vehemence they have exhibited over the past three weeks, voters will be very tired of their message well before the Democrats really need it: November 2004.
I have been in the position that the national Democrats were last night. I have stood in the offices of Speaker Gingrich hoping that the President of the opposite party would bomb.
Following the speech the Republican staff would assure each other that President Clinton had not "cleared the bar." But we knew he had. We knew that a President of the United States - any POTUS - does well when delivering that speech, in that venue, before that audience.
The domestic half of this speech differed from typical Republican rhetoric in that he talked about helping individuals - a tactic usually employed by Democrats.
He spoke of helping one child, or one drug addict, or one person looking for a job. He talked of transforming "America one heart and one soul at a time."
Democrats faxed and e-mailed prepared reactions to the SOTU based upon advanced copies of the speech. The reality of all those reactions is this: No one will care, because President Bush owned the stage last night and will stride across it today and for the next few days
Democratic candidates for President could be seen visibly trying to determine whether they should stand during the applause lines and whether, having stood, they should join the applause - weighing playing to the Liberal base necessary to get the nomination against risking being seen as playing politics with the State of the Union.
In the domestic section he laid out the policies his Administration would pursue over the coming year and, as the Constitution requires, the legislation he would be requesting from the Congress. That was pretty good, but the show stopper was the foreign policy section.
Unlike the almost pre-programmed ovations in the domestic section, the House Chamber was silent - the audience almost holding its breath - as the President carefully, deliberately and thoroughtly spoke about the dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.
And when President Bush praised the service members who are gathering on the edges of Iraq saying, "You believe in America and America believes in you," he owned the stage - not just the podium in the Well of the House, but the world stage.
It was the State of the Union address by the President of the United States.
The Democrats tried mightily - as we used to - to raise the bar for success so high the President could not possibly succeed.
President Bush confounded them again. He easily cleared the bar last night.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A link to the text of the State of the Union speech as delivered, a poster, and a Catchy Caption.
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