SOTU: The Democrats Respond

Pelosi and Daschle are responding, that’s a very bad idea.

Did Pelosi say faith? That had to have many Democrats cringing.

Pelosi has a rather ghastly expression on her face. Her eyebrows appear to be fixed in place several inches from her eyes and I don’t think she has blinked yet…

She’s criticizing Bush’s foreign policy as “isolationist” when Bush already demolished this shibboleth. They’re rehashing talking points that Bush has already dealt with in his speech… how sad. It’s the same call for “internationalization” when the occupation of Iraq is already very much international. This dismissal of our allies in Iraq is frankly insulting.

Pelosi looks like a victim of a bad botox operation… granted, that’s rather superficial, but it’s also distracting. Her eyebrows are locked in a continued raise. Her delivery is atrocious and canned. If this is the best the Democrats can do, they’re screwed.

Now Daschle is speaking. His delivery is slightly better, but still it seems canned and impersonal. The Democrats are speaking at us, while Bush spoke to us. The speech judge in me notices this right away. If this were a debate round, neither Pelosi nor Daschle would be getting many speaker points from me – although Daschle at least has more than one expression, although his smiles seem forced and disingenous to me.

Daschle is hitting on the idea that 3 million jobs have been lost – jobs are a weakness for Bush, and the Democrats will be hitting on this repeatedly. He’s also stressing more protectionist policies such as country-of-origin labeling on meat. Then again, that’s a major issue in agricultural South Dakota.

I’m sorry, but Daschle is simply uninspiring. Perhaps it’s my partisanship showing, but this is getting painful to watch. It’s another laundry list of various programs with no overarching theme. It’s not a bad speech, but it’s not a good one either. Unlike Bush’s speech, there are no lines that particularly stick out, just a string of program proposals strung together with cliches.

There’s a real contrast in approaches here, Bush was optimistic and determined, the Democrats were negative and uninspired. These sort of responses are always difficult to do, but Pelosi and Daschle didn’t do as well as they could have.

The fact is, the choice of these two are telling. They’re the face of the liberal Democratic establishment, and they represent the problems the Democrats are having with finding a message.

UPDATE: Looks like I wasn’t the only thing to think that Nancy Pelosi had been doing a bit too much botox. I feel rather bad for not discussing more substantive issues – however, in that speech substance was hard to find.