| US Presidential Election Manifesto Last night (this morning Moscow time) US President George W. Bush was scheduled to deliver his annual State of the Union address to a joint meeting of both houses of Congress. This time, this official duty is a reason for Bush to make a bid for a second presidential term and respond to critics from the opposition democratic camp who have already begun the election campaign.
The main topic is the justification of the war in Iraq. In a speech last year, Bush inserted baseless information about Saddam Hussein's attempts to acquire uranium in Africa. It is now clear that the weapons of mass destruction that motivated the war are unlikely to be found in Iraq. This forces Bush to shift his focus to the importance of the military operation for promoting democracy in Iraq. Even on the eve of the president's speech, leaks appeared that he intended to highlight the successes of the Americans in transferring power to representatives of the Iraqi people. As evidence, Adnan Pachachi, President of the Iraqi Interim Governing Council, was specially invited to Bush's speech.
Bush has significant international achievements. During the years of his presidency, Iraq was occupied by US troops, Iran made concessions on nuclear inspections. Of the “world axis of evil” in the form in which the Americans saw it, only intractable North Korea remained. As a demonstrative success of his tough diplomacy, Bush intended to cite the example of Libya, which voluntarily abandoned its program to create weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, the president was going to remind his fellow citizens that America still faces new terrorist attacks.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll released yesterday showed that over the year the number of Americans who want to hear from the president about the country's internal problems has grown from 31 to 40%. Among Bush's trump cards is that his unpopular tax cuts helped finally lift the US economy out of recession. True, 2.3 million Americans lost their jobs during Bush's presidency, which prompts him to think about the interests of the lower strata of society.
Bush intends to propose new programs to retrain the unemployed and create new jobs. He is concerned about the availability of health care services and containing the rise in their costs. The president's plans include stimulating the development of new medical technologies that could reduce the cost of care, as well as providing tax breaks for the estimated 45 million Americans who cannot afford health insurance.
To flatter conservatives, Bush was going to touch on the topic of marriage, which should be a union of a man and a woman, not individuals of the same sex. But he decided to remain silent about flights to Mars and the Moon - many Republican supporters considered these plans a senseless waste of government money. Alexander TIMOFEEV |
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