The ever shrinking bully pulpit

I woke up this morning to gauge the reaction to President Bush's final State of the Union address only to be disappointed by its lack of coverage and the constant focus of our media on the presidential primaries. The administration certainly had low expectations about the President's speech, and in true Bush form, he delivered on those low expectations. It's hard for me to imagine that just a few years ago the President was rallying the same chamber and the nation after the events of 9/11. It's almost as if the President has become irrelevant these past few years as he lost the Congress to the Democrats, was unable to deal with Social Security effectively, ran up record deficits, failed to deal with illegal immigration, etc. If he's able to get his economic stimulus through Congress, it will be one of his only major victories of the second term. Ah, the realities of a lame duck president? To be fair, if President Bush had given us a litany of things he wanted to do in his final year with this Congress I'd be writing about unrealistic he was. Obviously, the major issues of the day are the economy and Iraq. As Ed Henry puts it "As the president ponders his legacy on these two major issues, think of the irony The Washington Post pointed out earlier this week. The White House spent the past few years talking up a strong economy, but got very little credit because of struggles in Iraq. Now things are getting better in Iraq, but Bush is getting very little credit for that because .... the economy is getting worse." And to think, the Democrats and Republicans are killing themselves to be the next president!