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Two Cheers for Webb's Rebuttal to Bush Lowell Ponte Harmony was in the air during President George W. Bush's speech before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night. Both Mr. Bush and the Democrats who now control both houses of Congress agree that government should be bigger. The president's speech should therefore be called his Union of the State address. For his part, President Bush proposed new government spending that, according to the National Taxpayer Union Foundation (NTUF), will cost taxpayers an additional $12.4 billion per year. (The largest share of this, $8.9 billion according to NTUF, is allocated to increase the size of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps.) But the price of beefing up a military (to repair the damage of the last Democratic President Bill Clinton's looting, with Democratic cuts to national defense and intelligence during his and Hillary's administration averaging more than $125 billion per year) will be high. Like President Ronald Reagan, Mr. Bush will have to purchase defense increases by agreeing to increases at least as large to Democratic social spending schemes. No wonder Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was blinking and clapping so often as President Bush proposed one new spending item after another on Tuesday night. And no wonder that overnight polls showed a rapid (but probably temporary) jump in public support for the president. The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll of 370 adults found that 41 percent of viewers had a "very positive" reaction, and another 37 percent felt "somewhat positive" — a 78 percent favorable response. Sixty-seven percent said Mr. Bush's policies would move the country in the right direction. Story Continues Below
Mainstream media pundits reacted with near panic to such polls, rushing to remind their viewers that these were opinions only of "those who watched the speech." But those who watched — an audience larger than "American Idol's" later that evening — are the most politically involved citizens. Congressional Democrats boosted Mr. Bush's approval with their frequent applause for much of what he said. They produced the appearance of a love fest of bipartisan cooperation. But to have done otherwise would have made these Democrats seem partisan, petty and unworthy of being partners in power. By setting a tone of magnanimity with praise for Ms. Pelosi, President Bush effectively forced her to reciprocate. (It was reported, but not widely, that Ms. Pelosi planned to wear her traditional red dress — symbolic both of her ideology and her desire to play Santa Claus by dispersing endless welfare goodies. But Pelosi spilled food on her favorite dress earlier in the day and was forced to change clothing.) The most surreal event of the evening was not President Bush's speech but the Democratic Party reply by neophyte Virginia Sen. James Webb, one of the few prominent Democrats who is neither a presidential candidate nor someone who voted to let the president wage war in Iraq. Sen. Webb is a Vietnam War veteran from a proud Southern military family. How military? In the early 1960s when he was a member of the Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) at the University of Southern California [full disclosure: at about the same time I was a member of Air Force ROTC at U.S.C. but do not remember meeting him], Webb, according to one reporter, would go joy riding at night into the African-American neighborhoods of South Central Los Angeles. He and friends, according to this reporter, pointed guns out the windows of their cars at neighborhood residents. Webb, of course, has denied that he had ever thus behaved like a Ku Klux Klansman or domestic terrorist. The Washington Post mentioned the veteran reporter's claim only once, buried deep in a long story, and then like the rest of the liberal media spiked it. The liberal media was too busy tracking down every tangential story linking Webb's Republican opponent's purported racial slur "Macaca." Webb's reply to the president's Union of the State address was strange on several counts. It followed the usual Democratic line of socialist paternalism — that America's success is "not being fairly shared," so Big Brother must take from the productive to give the fruits of their labor to the unproductive. But in this tradition, Webb quoted only one Democratic president — and that from nearly two centuries ago, Andrew Jackson. Webb approvingly quoted Republican President Teddy Roosevelt. But this first Roosevelt was a jingo imperialist who believed America should "carry a big stick" in the world. Yes, TR was for government throwing its weight around domestically as well as overseas, bullying and bashing American businesses just as he did foreign countries. But is this really the hero today's anti-war Democrats want America to embrace? The other Republican president that Webb spoke of in glowing terms was Dwight Eisenhower, who saw America bogged down in the "bloody stalemate" of the Korean War and "as soon as he became president, he brought the Korean War to an end." Yes, Sen. Webb, but how did Ike end the Korean War? We now know. He, behind the scenes, threatened North Korea and Communist China that if they did not end the war within weeks he would unleash nuclear weapons against them. And when this former commander of all Allied forces in World War II threatened to take the Korean War nuclear, the enemy knew it was no bluff and surrendered. Sen. Webb, is this what you and the Democratic Party were proposing — that we now turn on the Iraqi terrorist-arming Iranians and threaten to nuke them before their atomic weapons program gives them the means to nuke us? Surely, Sen. Webb, you as former secretary of the Navy know that this is what President Eisenhower did. He spoke softly, but he carried and threatened to use a very big stick. Is this how you and the Democratic Party want us to end the current conflict in the countries on the eastern and western borders of Iran? Or were your words merely the usual Democratic web of deception? If you were offering Democratic support for President Bush issuing a threat to nuke Iran, you have my wholehearted agreement.
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