Before tonight's State of the Union...

Courtesy of Danielle's away message last night, I invite whatever limited readership I have to read Bill Clinton's 2000 State of the Union address.

Some phrases stand out from this address: "progress over partisanship" (a pipe dream these days), "back-to-back surpluses" (note also the number 42), "adoptions up by 30 percent" (amazingly, in spite of having a pro-choice president), "we must be peacemakers" (stifled guffaw)... I could go on but I won't. After all, someone who himself was rather long-winded once said that "brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes".

Naturally, one can argue there is a tremendous lack of foresight evident in parts of the speech. For example, the line about "so few external threats" proved to be false, or at least misleading, about 20 months later (let's ignore the fact that our president at that time was just returning from a month-long vacation, after what surely must have been an exhausting 6 months in office). Additionally, perfectly rational people could argue against many of the platforms set forth therein.

Indeed, I was not much of a Clinton fan myself. But back then, what I felt more than anything was a sense of hope. A hope deferred by a divisive election with no clear winner. A hope shattered by a bunch of asshole terrorists. Shattered pieces of a hope discarded with subsequent State of the Union addresses, which served primarily to catalyze our enemies and alienate our friends.

Maybe that hope only existed because I was 18, a little naive, without much sense of the real world. We were young then, and we thought we would be so forever. Now I fear that "our dreams outweigh our memories".

Oh well, let's see what difference I can make in Florida, which, as Jeff pointed out, is a battleground state.

Song lyric of the day:
"Let's get off this
Get on with it
If you wanna change the world
Shut your mouth and start to spin it"
- Cracker, Get Off This