布什连任就职演讲词解析
President Bush speaks on Thursday.
Porter Binks for USA TODAY
Broad themes come first, details later
Analysis by Judy Keen, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — President Bush\'s inaugural addre on Thursday was an effort to put his foreign policy in a sweeping historical context and an uncompromising defense of his doctrine of pre-emption and the invasion of Iraq.
In lofty language, he focused most of his 21-minute speech on a single theme: his belief that his miion, and \"the calling of our time,\" is \"ending tyranny in our world.\" He hammered home that theme with repetition, using the word \"freedom\" 27 times and \"liberty\" 15 times.\"Eventually, the call of freedom comes to every mind and every soul,\" he said.\"Liberty will come to those who love it.\"
Bush did not mention Iraq but referred to those who have \"shown their devotion to our country in deaths that honored their whole lives.\" He chided critics of the war.\"Some, I know, have questioned the global appeal of liberty,\" he said, \"though this time in history, four decades defined by the swiftest advance of freedom ever seen, is an odd time for doubt.\"
Ken Khachigian, who helped write Ronald Reagan\'s first inaugural addre, said Bush\'s emphasis on freedom was \"an agele definition of our country\" and its goals.
\"He set out a very noble and broad cause, an ambitious cause,\" he said.\"He explained the philosophical context of why we do things and that what is happening in Iraq goes beyond what you see on the news.It is ...another critical juncture for America.\"
Bush\'s pledge to bring the \"untamed fire of freedom\" to \"the darkest corners of our world\" was open-ended.He condemned tyranny, but he did not cite allies such as Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, where limits on individual freedom contradict the ideals he defined.
Nor did Bush say what countries he might target next as he tries to expand democracy in the Middle East.But Vice President Cheney said in an interview Thursday on the Imus in the Morning radio program that Iran \"is right at the top of the list\" of potential trouble spots.
Bush did not describe his domestic goals in any detail — that is to come in his State of the Union addre Feb.2 — but he called his vision of an \"ownership society\" that includes Social Security investment accounts and more homeownership part of an \"ideal of freedom.\"
That vaguene probably was intentional, said William Benoit, a profeor of communications at the University of Miouri.Like most presidents in their inaugural addrees, he said, Bush highlighted values, ideals and goals that are indisputably American.
\"Liberty, freedom, dignity, tolerance, democracy — who can be against any of these things?\" Benoit asked.\"Where the disagreements arise is in the details.\"
Some academics who study presidents\' words said Bush\'s speech, although well-crafted, probably won\'t have the galvanizing effect that the most memorable inaugural addrees have had.
\"He\'s doing his best to etch his name into history,\" said Paul Stob, who teaches political rhetoric at the University of Wisconsin.But Bush was not addreing the nation at a time of crisis as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt did in their most famous inaugural speeches.
\"It was effective in the sense that it met all the expectations,\" he said.\"But he faces a strongly divided nation\" that words alone can\'t heal.
Wayne Fields, an English profeor at Washington University in St.Louis and author of Union of Words: A History of Presidential Eloquence, said Bush persuasively defined the importance of liberty but might have won over more Americans if he had asked them for more than patience.\"It was a call for all of us to commit to ideals, but not a call for all of us to sacrifice for those ideals,\" he said.
As he does in most speeches, Bush referred to religion.\"When he says \'our vital interests and deepest beliefs are now one,\' he\'s saying faith in God and a belief in freedom have converged,\" said David Domke, who analyzed presidential speeches for his book God Willing?
Domke, an aociate profeor of communications at the University of Washington, said Bush\'s rhetoric suggested \"you are either with him or against God.\" But Jim Guth, a profeor of political science at Furman University, disagreed.He said Bush sees freedom as God\'s intention but wasn\'t identifying \"himself or the United States with God\'s will.\" Both men noted that Bush included Islam in the spectrum of American faith when he referred to \"the words of the Koran\" as an underpinning of character.
Bush said last week that his speech was \"aimed at history,\" and Khachigian and Fields said it was important as a window into his presidency and his philosophy of an aggreive pursuit of democracy overseas.\"This was an anti-isolationist speech for those who still believe in Fortre America,\" Khachigian said.\"There was a lot of elegant language in it, and he delivered it with a sense of purpose.\"
\"Speeches don\'t stand by themselves.They are part of interpreting who we are,\" Fields said.\"This one is an important document because it said something about the confidence of the
presidency.\"
Contributing: Cathy Lynn Groman
From USAToday /2005/01/21
