Ready for battle.(The State Of The Union Address)

PRESIDENT BUSH's State of the Union address gave the impression of a man eager to go out on the hustings and refute his critics--indeed, frustrated that he has not been able to do so. It was a campaign speech. One by one, he picked apart the Democrats' arguments. The war on terror is a war, he insists, not a legal action: "After the chaos and carnage of September 11th, it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers. The terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States--and war is what they got." The administration had built a broad international coalition for its action in Iraq, and critics were wrong to "dismiss their sacrifices." Action in Iraq had led directly to progress in Libya: "Nine months of intense negotiations involving the United States and Great Britain succeeded with Libya, while twelve years of diplomacy with Iraq did not. And one reason is clear: For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible--and no one can now doubt the word of America."

The president was similarly combative on education. He defended his No Child Left Behind Act. We did not like that bill, ourselves, but Bush's critique of the left-wing complaints about it were dead-on. It is not too much to ask that the schools produce third-graders who can read at third-grade levels, and testing is the way to make sure that they do so. "This nation will not go back to the days of simply shuffling children along from grade to grade without them learning the basics." (But shouldn't that "them" have been a "their"?)

There was something in the speech for most conservatives. Law-and-order conservatives learned that the president is prepared to defend the Patriot Act during the campaign. Free-market conservatives got a renewed call for making the tax cuts permanent, beefed-up health savings accounts, tort reform, and--above all--continued support for personal accounts in Social Security. Social ...