Only the most goldfish-minded could not have woken up with at least mild surprise this morning to hear George Bush telling Americans they were "addicted to oil". Diversifying towards alternative fuel sources makes environmental and geopolitical sense - but for a man who was raised in a family that made money in the oil industry, worked in the oil industry and has plenty of friends in it, the language was particularly strong.
So, here's the question. Is this a new Bush, or just the old one employing all the political tricks that got him to the top?
Slate, for one, is impressed by the goal set out in his state of the union address to cut Middle Eastern oil imports by 75%, replacing them with ethanol from farm crops. It applauds Mr Bush's "guts" for moving a debate about energy dependence to the top of his agenda, but still finds the whole thing very Bush.
Bush put his case in a very Bushian way, presenting it as a pain-free alternative to the awful status quo. Only the corn stalk will suffer as we remake a huge sector of the economy and convert to clean, politically innocent fuel sources. None of us have to trade in our SUV's, drive less, or turn down the thermostat.
The president says that in six years cars using the new ethanol will be competitive with gas-burning ones. By 2025, he pledges, America can reduce its dependence on Middle Eastern oil by 75%. His aides argue that technology makes this all possible. It sounds too good to be true, and almost certainly is.
The plan to cut imports of Middle Eastern oil by 75% is - as the Guardian's Julian Borger points out - not quite as impressive as it first sounds since the US takes only around a fifth of its oil imports from the region. But he too was impressed by the political manoeuvring. "If nothing else, it was a masterful stroke of public relations by the political virtuosi in the White House," he writes. "Expectations of the speech had been lowered for weeks ... then the president took the press by surprise with extraordinary plans and seemingly hard figures promising optimistic solutions."
Newsweek explores the theory there are two President Bushes. "Democrats frequently mistake this split personality as some kind of giant game of bait-and-switch," it observes. "But it's more accurate to think of it as the gap between Bush's idealistic self-image as a leader, and his realistic desire to do whatever it takes to win." An emailer to Andrew Sullivan points out another seeming contradiction - that the Bush's words do not always translate into reality.
I can't believe you're getting excited by mere words from the mouth of Bush. Don't you know better by now? In his 2003 SOTU, Bush talked up hydrogen-powered cars, proposing a total of $1.7 billion over the following five years
"Yeah, what did happen to the hydrogen car initiative?" Sullivan replies.
Back to Newsweek and its piece on the split personality. The authors claim that Bush, as he has done before, put it into action in the state of the union address in order to lever future electoral advantage. In the November midterms, the Democrats will try to take control of congress from the Republicans but, the piece predicts, the Republicans will fight back using Bush's blend of "soaring rhetoric and street-fighting politics". It expects the president to call "for bipartisan support for the war on terror, while kneecapping Democrats as defeatist simpletons."
Time, however, senses weakness ahead, perhaps that Mr Bush will have to change his partisan ways now he has "limited political capital and fiscal flexibility" and is approaching his final years in office.
"Last night's overture to Democrats was not new: Bush has been branding himself a uniter, not a divider, since he was Texas governor and running for president in 2000 [...] Instead, narrow party margins in both chambers - combined with unsparing tactics in the midterms of '02 and the national election of '04 - have left little room or incentive for cooperation.
Still, the afternoon after his re-election, the president told a victory rally "A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation." [...] This time, does he actually mean it?
