President George W. Bush's sixth state of the union ( SOTU ) address, delivered on Jan. 23, was a subdued affair—and one of his most effectively delivered speeches. But on the central issue of Iraq, it appears to be 'too little, too late' in terms of shaping broad public debate and opinion on that issue.
Gays and lesbians who watched both the President and the Democratic response by newly-elected Virginia Senator James Webb heard little on issues specific to their community. It was a bipartisan display of benign neglect.
Bush began graciously by noting the historic development of Rep. Nancy Pelosi as the first female Speaker of the House, and with a reference to her father, the late Thomas d'Alessandro, Jr., who served in the House under presidents Roosevelt and Truman.
He called for funding to combat AIDS and malaria as well as build democracy overseas. But there was no specific mention of the problems of HIV within the United States. 'I'm sad to say that my President's talk on AIDS in these speeches does not translate into dollars, and certainly hasn't brought any decline in the number of new HIV infections in the U.S.,' said Judith Dillard, an AIDS advocate and a board member of the national Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project ( CHAMP ) .
Bush proposed changes in the tax laws that would make it more affordable for people to directly obtain health insurance that is not tied to their job. He also would use federal funds to support state programs to provide coverage to the poor and sick who might not otherwise be able to obtain health insurance.
Bush talked a great deal about the war in Iraq, but there was no mention of allowing LGBT service members to serve openly in that conflict.
For Sherlock Holmes in the Hound of the Baskervilles, the crucial thing was what did not happen—the dog did not bark. A parsing of Bush's text revealed some interesting silences this year.
While God and faith were given a prominent role in previous SOTUs, they were surprisingly absent this year. The sole mention of God was in reference to one of the 'heroes,' basketball star Dikembe Mutombo, in quoting someone else saying, 'Mutombo believes that God has given him this opportunity to do great things." The now-naturalized American citizen built a hospital in his native Congo. Other once-popular words that were banished from the President's lexicon were religion and marriage.
'Perhaps the election results served to check the President's use of dangerous wedge politics since he chose not to lobby for a federal constitutional amendment to ban marriage rights for same-sex couples,' said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. 'While this is positive news, it hardly erases the last six years of legislative and policy attacks our community has suffered under this administration.'
Sen. Webb delivered the Democratic response, effectively reading from a teleprompter. His principal focus was a scathing critique of Bush's failures in Iraq. However, what the Democrats did not offer is a unified alternative to that policy.