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WASHINGTON: US President George W. Bush delivers his final State of
the Union speech Monday, its agenda-setting powers diluted by
pressing, unfinished business abroad and the fight to succeed him at
home.
With not quite 12 months left in his term, the
deeply unpopular president is slated to revive a few bold
ideas—like his May 2007 call to double US funding to battle
AIDS—and argue that US-led forces are winning in Iraq.
But he faces a US economy in crisis; the
uncertain fate of his suddenly personal, late-game Middle East peace
drive; a struggle over ending North Korea’s nuclear programs; and
tensions with Iran over its atomic ambitions.
“I will report that over the last seven years,
we’ve made great progress on important issues at home and abroad.
I will also report that we have unfinished business before us, and
we must work together,” he said Saturday.
He will urge lawmakers to approve a proposed US
economic stimulus package hoped-for by mid-February; make permanent
his giant tax cuts, which expire in 2010; and approve free trade
pacts with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea.
Bush is also expected to call on the US Congress
to renew his signature education reform law, approve a controversial
law allowing warrantless spying on US citizens, and curb its
appetite for costly pet projects.
Bush told the USA Today newspaper in an
interview Thurs-day that he would not wax sentimental over his time
in office, partly because “we’ve got so much going on” that
there is little time to dwell on the past.
“Look at the world—you’ve got Iraq, Iran,
Middle Eastern peace opportunities, North Korea, Sudan, Burma. This
is a world that is full of opportunities to spread freedom and hope
and opportunity,” he said.
But spokeswoman Dana Pe-rino acknowledged a day
later that “it is unrealistic” to expect lawmakers to bring
Bush’s calls for overhauling immigration policy and pension
programs back from the dead.
The speech comes not quite three months after
the president helped revive Middle East peace talks, and about three
weeks after he visited the region in hopes of promoting an agreement
to create a Palestinian state by late 2008.
For years, Bush has battled charges of keeping
the peace process at arm’s length by saying he was the first
sitting US president to call for such a state —but aides say he
wants to be able to point to more than words before his term runs
out.
Bush, whose time in office was shaped by the
September 11, 2001 attacks by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network,
is unlikely to address the fact that the terrorist mastermind he
vowed to capture “dead or alive” is still at large.
And six years after Bush used the same forum to
declare Iran, North Korea, and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq an “axis of
evil,” all three countries are still source of major headaches.
In Iraq, Bush’s decision to “surge”
roughly 30,000 more US troops to the front lines has helped tamp
violence down to roughly 2005 levels, but has failed to achieve the
policy’s two major goals: Political reconciliation and Iraqi
security forces taking responsibility for their country by November
2007.
Democrats opposed to the war have watched with
alarm as the White House has declared plans to seal a long-term
strategic relationship with Iraq by July—well before the
November elections that will decide Bush’s successor.
North Korea missed a December 31 deadline to
fully disclose its nuclear activities, forcing the White House to
quell an unprecedented public insurrection against Bush’s
diplomatic approach.
US officials worry that Pyongyang may be
looking to run out the clock before Bush’s successor takes over in
January 2009, gambling that the new president will offer the
Stalinist state a better deal.
And Iran has continued to resist UN sanctions
and global pressure to end uranium enrichment, while Washington has
struggled to keep diplomatic partners, especially China and Russia,
on board with its confrontational approach.
Bush is expected to travel extensively overseas
in 2008, notably next month when he spotlights his anti-AIDS
strategy with a trip to Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana, and Liberia.
-- AFP
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