Buried in a NYT story are some seriously telling observations about how Washington has changed in just a few weeks:
But all the courtesies and flourishes of the evening could not paper over the reminders of how power has flowed away from the president in the new Washington.
Not just because for the first time Mr. Bush delivered his address with a Democrat staring down his back. Not just because his poll numbers are dismal. Not just because the mayor of the nation’s capital rejected the White House’s invitation to sit with the first lady, Laura Bush, in her box and instead came as Ms. Pelosi’s guest. Even Republicans, while noting that it was “the president’s day,” as Senator John W. Warner of Virginia described it, yielded only a share of the spotlight.
Mr. Warner and others were working with Democrats, whom six months ago they derided as Defeatocrats, on resolutions opposing Mr. Bush’s proposal to increase the number of troops in Iraq. They unveiled their resolutions in the days before the speech and were planning to take them up the morning after.
The boxes on either end of the chamber — Ms. Pelosi’s on one, the first lady’s on the other — were a tableau of change.
In some years past, Mr. Bush invited Iraqis to make his case for the war, including Ahmed Chalabi, the exile-turned-advocate for the war who has now fallen from favor, as well as ordinary Iraqis with ink-stained fingers to prove that they had cast their ballots in their first democratic elections. This year, the only reminders of Iraq were a few soldiers; the box was mostly filled with educators, entrepreneurs, an energy researcher and those with heartwarming 9/11 stories.
The Democrats, meanwhile, invited people who symbolized the legislation they have passed in their first two weeks in office: advocates of embryonic stem cell research, those who fought for national security reforms after the Sept. 11 attacks, and labor leaders who backed an increase in the minimum wage.
–ASM
