The president's State of the Union Address will be little noted and not long remembered. There was a sense that he was talking at, not to, the country. He asserted more than he persuaded, and he chose to redeclare his beliefs rather than argue for them in any depth.
Two thirds of the 700 people CBS News polled who watched the speech approved of the proposals made, however Peggy Noonan says the speech was "not precisely a pudding without a theme, but a thin porridge." To show the rancor in the chamber, Harry Hoover, points out that when Mr. Bush spoke on Social Security, and the failures of Congress to act, the Democrats broke into "a wild cheering for their own lack of action." Depending on who got to the media first, found it was their message that stuck.