National Review has a good symposium on the SOTU (as does IWF), I was glad to see Michael Cannon, who deals with health issues at Cato, note that the president’s proposals would “dramatically” reduce government’s role in health care.


And I am glad that Nikolas K. Gvosdev, editor of the National Interest, critiqued the president’s palaver on the subject of reducing our dependence on foreign oil (“It’s well and good to want to reduce gasoline usage by 20 percent by 2017 and to, over time, increase the strategic petroleum reserve. The problem is…). But, frankly, my dears, believing, as does the president, that we are engaged in an existential struggle, I am more interested in what he said about this life and death issue. Clifford May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and Peter Brookes of Heritage were good on this subject. Here’s a tidbit from Brookes:


“[T]the words of Winston Churchill seem particularly salient: ‘However absorbed a commander may be in the elaboration of his own thoughts, it is necessary sometimes to take the enemy into consideration.’

“It is clear the president has fully taken our enemies in Iraq and the region — from al Qaeda to the Sunni insurgents to the proxy war being waged by Iran through Shia militias — into consideration.

“As the Congress debates and proposes its own plan for Iraq, they must do so as well.”