Harry, Nancy, and my son Buster

Egad.

I’m not going to say much about the speech because 30,000 bloggers are talking about it. I’ll just say it gave me goosebumps in some parts – particularly when he looked directly into the camera and said to Iran: if you go for it, we’re with you. And when he talked of the troops, “often taking great risks on my orders…”

And of course, that hug. My husband is watching the replay on C-Span and it seems to me they cut part of that hug – when the women became caught on their buttons. But maybe C-span just had a different camera going.

I have always liked Harold Ford. I like him still. Got a kick out of him asking the president for an autograph on the speech…I don’t recall ever seeing a president asked to sign quite so many copies. They knew this was a big one. Magnificent, and well delivered.

As to Reid and Pelosi….

Reid is just too, too precious for my taste…he scrunches his nose and wriggles his shoulders as though he is the Meg Ryan of the Democrat party. He’s like a weird amalgam of Tom Daschle and Mr. Rogers. When he giggled about the groundhog and then talked about the boy who wants to be “just like him” when he grows up – (riiiight) my 15 year old son, Buster, pretending to be Reid announced, “and now, I’m going to show you a puppy! A PUPPY!!! He’s so cute, isn’t he? Woof!”

Then he saw Pelosi and yelped, “what the hell is wrong with that woman’s eyebrows?”

It cannot be easy to give a rebuttal to the SOTU address…basically you have to smile and gently critique. But you know…the democrats could have had one idea – something of substance to say. Buster says, “I don’t understand…we just saw that remarkable moment between the Iraqi woman and the mother of the soldier. It was a huge speech. Wouldn’t the Democrats be smarter to come on, drop the script and say, ‘we just shared a remarkable hour together, and Democrats want very much to work with the president in a real bi-partisan manner, for real results – we have ideas of our own that we can bring to the table, and here they are….”

I’m not sure they HAVE any, though. That’s the trouble. Ideas, I mean. I’m not sure they have any ideas. I hear a lot of “we sure hate Bush” from liberal bloggers, and I hear nonsense from Reid and Pelosi, but no ideas. Ms. Pelosi seemed particularly strange to me – suggesting that Iraq has become innundated with terrorists…and therefore we should get out of there!

Doesn’t she think staying in and killing them would be better? Coward.

But that moment – the embrace between a daughter who lost her father to a tyrant, and a mother who lost her son to defeat him….what a moment…and Bush just standing there, watching, not looking for anything for himself, not mugging for a camera. Not applauding, not nodding, not biting his lip – just letting them have their moment…

Love him or hate him, by sheer force of one man’s will, and the strength of a few men, like Tony Blair and John Howard, who decided that if he remained standing they would stand with him…something great has occured.

One man of conscience, not beholden to a need to be loved, not invested in ego, and ready to be hated for his stand…remarkable.

The proudest two votes this former Democrat ever cast were for George W. Bush. God bless and keep him.