Bush Means It

When Clinton was President, we got used to the staged theatrics of his presentation - biting the lower lip and feeling our pain. He was good at doing all that stuff, but nobody was fooled. He didn't really believe it.

When President Bush speaks, I get a sense that there's no show business about him at all - he's serious, and the rest of the world is figuring that out too. After that speech last night, how would you like to be one of the mad mullahs in Iran, a royal in Saudi Arabia, or the President of Egypt today? You might want to start checking out time shares...in other countries.

John Podhoretz writes in his review of the speech:

ONE of the foolish cavils against President Bush's focus on spreading liberty around the world is that he hasn't insisted on it everywhere and in all places. Well, last night, he shut them up but good. In his State of the Union Address, he explicitly called on Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and the Saudi Arabian royals to embrace democratic reforms.

And he offered a powerful moral message to the burgeoning dissident movement in theocratic Iran: "As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you."

In every major Bush speech, he swings for the fences with a surprising and bracing line that instantly changes things. In the 2002 State of the Union, it was his remark about the "Axis of Evil." In 2005, the world-changing moment may have been those 11 words directed at young Iranians who we know (from their blogs and e-mails) are hungering for freedom like their neighbors in Iraq.

There may be some difficult days ahead for the leaders of Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.