action.
And on this damp, wet January day, no one could imagine what such an event might be.
No one but a handful of men, dispatched from the other side of the world.
The State of the Union
“Mis-tah Speak-ah … the President of the United States!”
President Gore strode into the House chamber as the senators, representatives, cabinet
members, Supreme Court justices, chiefs of staff, and a gallery of notables stood
and cheered. It was February 27, 2001, and the new president would be making his first
appearance at a joint session of Congress since presiding over the counting of Electoral
College votes that had made him president seven weeks earlier. He had come here with
a message, and a presentation, designed to put him squarely within the broad middle
of American politics.
The president’s box was dotted with “Skutniks,” guests the president could point to
as living representatives of the points he was making. (They were so named because
in 1982 President Reagan had invited Lenny Skutnik, who had rescued one of the passengers
of an airplane that had crashed in the Potomac River, to sit in the gallery during
the State of the Union address.) Some had served the same purpose during Gore’s 2000
acceptance speech at the Democratic convention: Jacqueline Johnson, from St. Louis,
burdened by the cost of prescription drugs, and Mildred Nystel, who left welfare for
a job, aided by the Earned Income Tax Credit. Others were new faces: Jeffrey Wigand,
the tobacco executive who had blown the whistle on the industry’s efforts to hide
the impact of cigarette smoking, and one more person, whose identity was not disclosed
until the speech itself and who would shortly come to symbolize the Gore administration’s
most singular, least celebrated achievement.
Most of Gore’s speech was a study in caution. The president proposed a half-trillion-dollar
tax cut, directed at the business community and all but the wealthiest; another half-trillion
from the impending surplus went to shoring up the Social Security and Medicare trust
funds; four hundred billion more went to paying down the national debt. (This last
triggered a dustup among Gore’s economic team, with chief economic advisor Paul Krugman
warning, “If we wipe out the debt completely, we have no lines of credit; you guys
need to go back and see what Alexander Hamilton had to say about that.”)
The president proposed a health-care policy that was distinctly small-bore, lowering
the age of Medicare eligibility to sixty-two—God knows he could afford that, with
trillions of dollars in surpluses incoming in the next decade—and if Ted Kennedy was
caught by the cameras grumbling to Senator Chuck Schumer about “another damn Eisenhower
Republican posing as a Democrat,” well, that was just fine with Gore’s political team.
And, just as he had promised members of the Congressional Rural Caucus, there was
a $10 billion down payment to make broadband a national reality.
“My dad was the chief Senate sponsor of the Interstate Highway System,” Gore reminded
the Congress, “and I intend to be the champion of the Interstate Information Superhighway.
Maybe I didn’t invent the Internet, but I darn well intend to improve it.”
It was toward the end of his speech when Gore turned to a subject that had not been
mentioned in the daylong briefings given to prominent journalists by White House staffers.
“Our eyes have been focused here at home,” he said soberly. “An understandable focus
with the Cold War gone and the specter of nuclear war a fading memory. But we must
never forget that there are forces around the globe that wish us ill and are prepared
to kill as many as they can, with no regard for innocent life.
“Terrorism is the enemy of our generation, and we must prevail against it. America
will remain a target, because we are uniquely present in the world, because we have
taken a
And on this damp, wet January day, no one could imagine what such an event might be.
No one but a handful of men, dispatched from the other side of the world.
The State of the Union
“Mis-tah Speak-ah … the President of the United States!”
President Gore strode into the House chamber as the senators, representatives, cabinet
members, Supreme Court justices, chiefs of staff, and a gallery of notables stood
and cheered. It was February 27, 2001, and the new president would be making his first
appearance at a joint session of Congress since presiding over the counting of Electoral
College votes that had made him president seven weeks earlier. He had come here with
a message, and a presentation, designed to put him squarely within the broad middle
of American politics.
The president’s box was dotted with “Skutniks,” guests the president could point to
as living representatives of the points he was making. (They were so named because
in 1982 President Reagan had invited Lenny Skutnik, who had rescued one of the passengers
of an airplane that had crashed in the Potomac River, to sit in the gallery during
the State of the Union address.) Some had served the same purpose during Gore’s 2000
acceptance speech at the Democratic convention: Jacqueline Johnson, from St. Louis,
burdened by the cost of prescription drugs, and Mildred Nystel, who left welfare for
a job, aided by the Earned Income Tax Credit. Others were new faces: Jeffrey Wigand,
the tobacco executive who had blown the whistle on the industry’s efforts to hide
the impact of cigarette smoking, and one more person, whose identity was not disclosed
until the speech itself and who would shortly come to symbolize the Gore administration’s
most singular, least celebrated achievement.
Most of Gore’s speech was a study in caution. The president proposed a half-trillion-dollar
tax cut, directed at the business community and all but the wealthiest; another half-trillion
from the impending surplus went to shoring up the Social Security and Medicare trust
funds; four hundred billion more went to paying down the national debt. (This last
triggered a dustup among Gore’s economic team, with chief economic advisor Paul Krugman
warning, “If we wipe out the debt completely, we have no lines of credit; you guys
need to go back and see what Alexander Hamilton had to say about that.”)
The president proposed a health-care policy that was distinctly small-bore, lowering
the age of Medicare eligibility to sixty-two—God knows he could afford that, with
trillions of dollars in surpluses incoming in the next decade—and if Ted Kennedy was
caught by the cameras grumbling to Senator Chuck Schumer about “another damn Eisenhower
Republican posing as a Democrat,” well, that was just fine with Gore’s political team.
And, just as he had promised members of the Congressional Rural Caucus, there was
a $10 billion down payment to make broadband a national reality.
“My dad was the chief Senate sponsor of the Interstate Highway System,” Gore reminded
the Congress, “and I intend to be the champion of the Interstate Information Superhighway.
Maybe I didn’t invent the Internet, but I darn well intend to improve it.”
It was toward the end of his speech when Gore turned to a subject that had not been
mentioned in the daylong briefings given to prominent journalists by White House staffers.
“Our eyes have been focused here at home,” he said soberly. “An understandable focus
with the Cold War gone and the specter of nuclear war a fading memory. But we must
never forget that there are forces around the globe that wish us ill and are prepared
to kill as many as they can, with no regard for innocent life.
“Terrorism is the enemy of our generation, and we must prevail against it. America
will remain a target, because we are uniquely present in the world, because we have
taken a
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