William F. Buckley, Jr. didn’t like the inaugural address either. “Confusing,” and apparently “an improvisation,” it was also ungrammatical:
“Mr. Bush said that ‘whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny.’ You can simmer in resentment, but not in tyranny.
Bad grammar and bad policy:
“What about China? Is it U.S. policy to importune Chinese dissidents ‘to start on this journey of progress and justice’? How will we manifest our readiness to ‘walk at [their] side?'”
Invade?
China is “too massive a challenge to our liberationist policy,” Buckley notes., and Africa “too exiguous.” Okay, then:
“What about Saudi Arabia? Here is a country embedded in oppression. Does President Bush really intend to make a point of this? … Will we refuse to buy Saudi oil?”
Yeah. That’s it: wind-powered cars. The wave of the future.
Noonan, Robinson, and now Buckley are stampeding for the exits. And they didn’t even stay for the end of the second act.