How chilly a reception in the House chamber?

Another pitch on Iraq
Tuesday night will be a chance for Bush to renew his pitch for support of his Iraq strategy. “The issue of Iraq will be the one issue that everyone is listening intently to,” said Smith. “It’s a second chance for the president to make his case to the American people through the Congress.”

“I don’t know when a president has come to deliver a State of the Union address with such low political capital,” said Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., who was elected last November and will in the chamber for his first address. 

If Bush says something about global climate change, for instance, that indicates a change of thinking on his part, will Cohen stand up and cheer?

“I might politely applaud. I don’t expect to spend a lot of time getting out of my chair. Energy conservation,” he explained wryly.

Cohen recalled that his predecessor, Rep. Harold Ford, was photographed embracing Bush at the last year’s State of the Union. “It was a well-publicized photograph and I’m not sure in the long run if that helped or hurt the congressman,” Cohen said. Ford lost his bid for the Senate seat in Tennessee last fall to Republican Bob Corker.

BUSH STATE OF THE UNION SPEECHES 2001 address 2002 speech 2003 speech 2004 speech 2005 speech 2006 Speech 2007 speech

Cohen said he did not expect members, Tuesday night, to be eager to get close to Bush as he enters and leaves the chamber. “I imagine there’ll be some people who will do so, but I don’t imagine he’ll have to have a large amount of mouthwash or mints,” he said.

'Grace under pressure'
Since Bush’s party suffered big losses in last year’s election and he is now under fire from some Republicans, Tuesday night will be a chance to show what Hemingway called “grace under pressure.”

The president who wins high marks both from Republicans such as Lott and Democrats such as Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., for performing under duress is Bill Clinton.

He delivered his 1998 State of the Union just six days after the news of the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal broke.

Clinton carried it off with nonchalance, rallying his party to the old Democratic standby: preserving Social Security. “What should we do with this projected surplus? I have a simple four-word answer: Save Social Security first,” Clinton declared.

Contrary to the predictions of some commentators, he neither mentioned nor even hinted at the Lewinsky furor.

“There was a lot of tension,” recalled Dodd. “But the first thing he did when he came in was ask the Congress to take a moment of silence and stand up in remembrance of Sonny Bono,” the California Republican who’d died in a skiing accident a few weeks earlier. “That was a wonderful thing to do, a moment when we could all start that process in a positive way.” (Clinton also called on Congress to remember Rep. Walter Capps, D-Calif., who had died two months earlier.)

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, who was there that night, too, recalled, “I was impressed that he could deliver a good speech in that atmosphere. If you had all that on top of you, it would get in your head and weigh you down, but he seemed to shove it all to the side and go forward.”

Brownback’s comment is a reminder that politics is a form of theater; on the night of the State of the Union, members of Congress, like playgoers, are there to watch and judge the Performer in Chief.

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