Don't be surprised if you hear alot about or from President Bush this month. As the
has-been explains:
We don't celebrate Presidents' Day until February, but at the White House, every January is Presidents' Month. No other time of year is so stacked in a president's favor. January is the time when the executive branch proposes what the legislative branch will spend the rest of the year disposing.
In the coming year, the Bush White House will try to bill a hundred speeches as "major." But the one that matters most needs no extra billing: the State of the Union address, now scheduled for Jan. 31. The press often covers the State of the Union as a back-to-the-wall, death-defying event. That's the treatment Bill Clinton got when he had to face Congress a few days after the Lewinsky scandal broke in 1998. The year before, he appeared split-screen alongside the verdict in O.J. Simpson's civil trial.
In truth, the State of the Union is the easiest speech a president can give outside his party's nominating convention. He has a month to practice and a ready audience: Partisans in Congress never miss an applause line, as everyone who has suffered along at home knows all too well. In a job with many perks, it's one of the biggest: an uninterrupted hour of prime time to set the nation's political agenda for the coming year.
But wait, there's more. The president also has the whole month to lay the groundwork for his other command performance, the federal budget, which will be released the first week of February.
Every cut, increase, and new proposal in the $2.6 trillion budget has already been decided and is locked in the computers at OMB. The day after the budget is released, most of those details will be dead on arrival in Congress. But all January long, the White House can spoon-feed the same items to starved reporters as front-page news.
This year, thanks to the Alito hearings, Congress will make a cameo appearance in the president's January. Unless Judge Alito falls flat on his face, however, the hearings will more likely serve as another boost for the executive branch.
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