Bush facing harsh realities...

[Neil D]

WASHINGTON: President George W Bush's once bold agenda has given way to harsher realities and a more cautious tone after a year of setbacks and declining poll numbers, US media said yesterday.

Bush's annual State of the Union speech revealed a weakened president shying away from the aggressive stances he adopted in years past, commentators and newspapers said.

"He sounded more subdued than triumphant, more realistic than grandiose," The Washington Post wrote in an editorial.

The newspaper said: "His caution was not merely a contrast to the swashbuckling style of the past but an outgrowth of it." Large tax cuts, an expensive prescription drug benefit and the troubled, costly US occupation of Iraq have "narrowed the president's options," the Post wrote.

Most analysts and editorial writers focused on Bush's call to end America's dependence on foreign oil, agreeing with his premise but questioning his proposed solution.

Referring to Bush's vow to replace 75 per cent of oil imports from the Middle East by 2025, the Post said the "deadline is far off, and it's not clear what he intends in practice."

Promoting research into alternative fuels is not enough, the daily said, urging instead a tax on hydrocarbons to help create a more competitive energy market.

Yet even some of Bush's critics were pleasantly surprised that a former Texas oilman would be willing to push for alternative energy sources.

"For a president who came from the oil business and who still has many friends and backers in the industry, putting this initiative at the top of his agenda took some guts," wrote John Dickerson at the website Slate.

But several praised Bush for recognising that America's gas guzzling days must end.

"Many people have said it is amazing that an oil man would do that. But the oil man is the president and the president has low ratings," said Robert McGeehan, a fellow in American Foreign Policy at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. "Americans love motor cars, and high petrol prices have affected them."

The French daily Le Monde was skeptical that Bush could reach his goal of cutting oil imports from the Middle East by 75pc in the next two decades.

"The goal seems difficult to reach for the US, which is expected to consume 26 million barrels of oil per day in 2025, with 60pc from imports," it said.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lashed out at the United States, calling it a "hollow superpower" that is "tainted with the blood of nations" and said Tehran would continue its nuclear programme.

Bush appeared to tone down his criticism of North Korea and his concerns over the growing competitiveness of China and India, experts in Asia said.

While he vowed America would continue trying to spread democracy, experts said his comments on foreign issues were relatively broad.

In Germany, Social Democratic lawmaker Karsten Voigt said that while Berlin agreed with several key foreign policy points Bush made, including the need for more democracy in the Middle East and the fight against terrorism, words were not enough.

Valerie Marcel, an expert on energy and oil at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, said Bush has good reasons to make America less dependent on Middle East oil.

"The big concern for Republican senators is ... the idea that Middle East producers are making so much money from high oil prices. This money they feel could, and will, fund terrorism against the US," she said.

Conservative pundits praised Bush for demanding an extension of previous tax cuts and for defending his administration's approach to the "war on terror," including a domestic eavesdropping programme.

With opposition Democrats questioning the legality of the spying, Bush "threw down the gauntlet," wrote John Tabin in The American Spectator.

Bush scored political points when Democratic lawmakers in the audience chose not to stand and applaud when the president argued that eavesdropping without court-approved warrants was crucial to deterring terrorists, Tabin wrote.

"Democrats very much do not want to be seen as arguing against fighting Al Qaeda. Yet here they were, appearing to side against the notion that we want to know about Al Qaeda's communications," Tabin wrote.

He added: "The real strength of the speech was in how it forced the worst stereotypes of the Democratic Party into the foreground by virtue of the opposition's reactions." But the Los Angeles Times criticised Bush's defence of wiretapping as "the most cynical part of the address." It was "Orwellian" to rename domestic spying on telephone calls and e-mails a "terrorist surveillance programme," it said.

The New York Times said that the two minutes and 15 seconds of Bush's speech devoted to energy independence offered a "grand" goal but a lacklustre approach that ignored global warming and the resources needed to tackle the issue.

"Last night's remarks were woefully insufficient," the paper wrote in an editorial. "The country's future economic and national security will depend on whether Americans can control their enormous appetite for fossil fuels." The president should have asked Americans to limit their material comforts for the greater good, the Times said.