George W. Bush is a lucky, lucky man. His certification as president-elect was delayed by a month because of the inconvenient fact that no one really knew who won; the Supreme Court finally took care of that. But lest Bush have been compelled to get up to speed too quickly, the real start of his presidency was delayed by a month, too, as the media and political class, appalled anew at the corrupt excesses of the Clintons, let the Bushies organize their administration amid a virtual news blackout.

Thus, Tuesday night’s joint address to Congress — which the White House, for some unknown reason, chose not to call a “State of the Union” speech — was, in some ways, Bush’s real inauguration, the first time the public was focused on him rather than his brilliant, grotesque predecessor.

To his credit, Bush made the most of it. His 49-minute speech consisted largely of detail-free platitudes, but he understands something that his critics do not: that modern political rhetoric consists mainly of the effective delivery of such platitudes. Even if Bush can’t pull off the Reaganesque flourishes that make Republicans go all gooey with nostalgia, his speech was still better than the gooney-bird presentations of his father. It was also more disciplined than those of Bill Clinton, who combined platitudes and details in Brezhnevian marathons that, I will confess, I never managed to get through without at least a quick nap somewhere in the middle.

Bush strove mightily to put a moderate sheen on what was clearly the most conservative budget proposal since Ronald Reagan’s first term. It will be interesting to see whether he can get away with it. He reached out so hard his arms must have hurt, as he embraced environmentalists, African-Americans, faith-based social workers (“these good people who are heppin’ their neighbors in need”), senior citizens, and just about every other group he could think of. He also delivered a graceful, gracious tribute to South Boston congressman Joe Moakley, who is battling incurable leukemia. (“That was nice,” Senator John Kerry told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell during the post-speech show. “That was very, very nice. Particularly in Boston we appreciate that.”)

Best of all for Bush, the Democratic response, by Senate minority leader Tom Daschle and House minority leader Dick Gephardt, was stilted and awful. Daschle sounded like Barney the Dinosaur, and the sweating Gephardt came off as though he were pleading for a stay of execution. The president can only hope that the public was watching.

Bush’s obvious aim is triangulation, Bill Clinton–style. As David Shribman wrote in Tuesday’s Boston Globe, Bush’s entire speech rested on the word “but.” Here’s Bush’s approach distilled to its purest form, from the early part of his speech: “Year after year in Washington, budget debates seem to come down to an old, tired argument: on one side, those who want more government, regardless of the cost; on the other, those who want less government, regardless of the need. We should leave those arguments to the last century and chart a different course.”

Sounds good. But whereas Clinton crafted a genuine “third way,” pulling the Democratic Party back to the center, Bush is giving mere lip service to centrist policies while pursuing a tax plan designed to appeal to the most revanchist elements of his party. As the Wall Street Journal put it in a front-page analysis on Wednesday, “He talks to the middle while going to the right.” Salon’s Jake Tapper described Bush’s centrist appeal this way: “Sure, the packaging’s tough to dislike when rarefied, focus-grouped and carefully modulated. But the product doesn’t meet the advertising.”

Bush did what he needed to do Tuesday night: he brought his month-long stealth presidency to a close and he got his public presidency off to a high-minded start. His challenge, now, will be to push an irresponsible, right-wing tax-cut proposal while burnishing his reputation as a bipartisan moderate. He shouldn’t get away with it. But that doesn’t mean he won’t.

Read Seth Gitell's piece on Bush's speech:

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/this_just_in/documents/00644555.htm