Sebelius Response to the State of the Union Is Pitch-Perfect

Traditionally, the Democratic responses to President George W. Bush’s State of the Union Speeches have been a reaction. They haven’t set agendas so much as they have explained their disagreements with the President’s agendas. This was, in some ways, an important strategy for enabling Democrats to vote against the President on issues where the American people would not otherwise have heard their point of view.

Monday night afforded the Democratic Party a different opportunity. It was chance for them diminish Bush’s presidency by giving a speech with more ambitious an agenda than the president himself.

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’s speech was clearly envisioned not as a response to Bush’s proposals but rather a substitute for what presidents are supposed to say in their State of the Union addresses. For all the meaningful-but-theoretical talk on the presidential campaign trail about asking Americans to unite behind a cause and to make sacrifices for it, Sebelius’s speech may have been the first time (in a long time) that a sitting official has actually asked it of us directly with such a big megaphone.

Sebelius has been criticized by several bloggers for lacking enthusiasm and emotion in her delivery of the speech. That’s a criticism that I understand, but I’m not really sure how I would’ve read the message differently. Aside from putting an audience in the room and adding multiple camera angles, I’m not sure how much more interesting it could have been. If Bush was forced to give his speech in a room with no audience and no additional camera angles, it would’ve been boring, too.

The address was meant to seem serious and presidential. On that point, it succeeded. Too much flash would have diminished the message the speech was intended to send.

Sebelius’s response was not merely a response; it was a speech to set the agenda for “a new American majority.” And out here in the Midwest, that’s the message that wins.