in contrast to such electric evenings as Clinton's State of the Union in 1998 as the Lewinsky affair was bursting over his head, or Nixon's desperate rhetorical lunges in January 1974, flailing for air as the undertow of Watergate scandal drowned his second term.
Bush stepped to the rostrum shackled to polling numbers that put him at the third lowest presidential ratings on record. He has the approval of only 28 per cent of the people, still hovering above Carter's 26 per cent in 1979, in the late autumn of his term, and Nixon's 24 per cent shortly before he resigned.
The least enthusiastic people in the chamber were probably members of Bush's own party, who see him as an unalloyed political liability and against whose escalation of force in Iraq seven powerful Republican senators are now in open, vociferous revolt.
When a president who came to maturity making daily obeisance to west Texas starts hailing biodiesel and mumbling about grass clippings as alternative energy, you know it's all over; that the President's policy advisers 
