Usually the State of the Union address is a hopeful exercise. A President lays out his plan for a better America to Congress and the American people. Traditionally he may not be able to see many of his ideas become actual policy - mainly due to partisan politics - there is still a feeling that perhaps he wants to make our lives better.

But this President’s words are flat and empty. After watching him work for 5+ years we know that the plans he sets forth in the SOTU are nothing but bombast. With a majority in both houses of Congress, this President could make life better for the American people but he could care less.

This President says he has a plan to increase our competitiveness in the global marketplace by making math and science education a priority. Yet, his current policies prove that education for all Americans is anything but. Almost 13 million dollars in educations grants cut. The “No Child Left Behind” program underfunded. The privatization of tutoring services promoted over equipping our schools with what they need to help students stay in school and succeed. With a majority of his party in both houses of congress he continues to cut and underfund programs that would help the least fortunate among us in favor of tax breaks for large corporations and tax cuts for the wealthy.

This President’s foreign policy is a disaster. His use of the word “offensive” in last night’s speech (”take the offensive,” “be on the offensive,” “stay on the offensive”) was in itself, offensive. He took the opportunity to manufacture his own reality and create a fake opposition to his foreign policy. An opposition that he insists wants the US to return to “isolationism.” Is he seriously equating the withdrawal of troops from Iraq with isolationism? Is he saying that seeking a diplomatic solution to Iran is isolationist? If so, then he’s incorrectly equating a better, less thug-like foreign policy with isolationism. In his mind, there are no solutions in between “isolationism” and deploying troops preemptively and prematurely. In the minds of his real opposition, the Jack Murthas and John Kerrys and Barack Obamas of Congress for instance, there are many, many solutions and none of them suggest that we crawl in a hole and ignore the rest of the world.

And I wonder where all of last night’s talk about bi-partisanship came from? Now that the Republicans are mired in scandal is it time to paint Washington with one broad bi-partisan stroke? Is it really the responsibility of both parties to “clean up Washington” and the business of politics? Perhaps it is. But this President presented it this way not because a bi-partisan initiative is right for the country but because he wants the American people to think that Jack Abramoff played his little games on both sides of the aisle. Very sneaky, Mr. President, but in the words of Paul Krugman, “the Abramoff affair is a purely Republican Scandal.”

It’s difficult to get excited or even agitated about a Bush SOTU anymore. So many hollow and dishonest words. He’s had many years to shift our focus and cut our reliance on oil. Does anyone really believe that he will lead this country in the next three years in any other direction? Will Dick Cheney and his record-profit making Exxon cronies let him?

This post was written by Mary Mancini