Last night President Bush delivered the first State of the Union address of his second term.

In a 53-minute address Bush emphasized the responsibilities of the current generation, touching on domestic issues such as Social Security and international events like Iraq.

"Tonight, with a healthy, growing economy, with more Americans going back to work and with our nation an active force for good in the world, the state of our union is confident and strong," Bush said.

Bush spoke about Social Security, saying it would not change for people over 55, but reforms need to be made.

"Social Security was a great moral success in the 20th century, and we must honor its great purposes in this new century," Bush said. "The system, however, on its current path, is headed toward bankruptcy, and so we must work together to strengthen and save Social Security."

Bush said the entire system will be exhausted and bankrupt by 2042. This comment received the only audible boos of the speech, which was interrupted for about 17 total minutes of applause.

He described a voluntary personal accounts system, in which workers could save away their own money, to be used by them later or passed along to relatives.

Bush later spoke about the international situation, saying the force of human freedom is the only force powerful enough to stop the rise of terror.

"Because democracies respect their own people and their neighbors, the advance of freedom will lead to peace," Bush said. "We will succeed because the Iraqi people value their own liberty, as they showed the world last Sunday.

Bush said the administration will not set a timetable for leaving Iraq, but will only leave when it has achieved the result it desires.

"The attack on freedom in our world has reaffirmed our confidence in freedom's power to change the world," Bush said.

Zach Corey, treasurer of the College Democrats and a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences, said he thought the speech was fairly ambitious.

"There's a lot to do in this country that both sides can agree on, and he's focusing on the contentious issues," Corey said.

Corey said he thought the issue of Social Security was too complex to be laid out in simple sound bites. The Democrats are planning to hold a filibuster to prevent those reforms, Corey said.

Daniel Suhr, the former president of Students for Bush and a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences, said the Democrats keep opposing the president's policies.

"It's just like the David Spade commercials, where everything is no," Suhr said. "That's the modern Democratic party."

Corey said he thought the goal of ending tyranny was noble, but he was struck by how hesitant the Joint Chiefs of Staff seemed when Bush was outlining his plans.

"He wants to be seen as a wartime president," Corey said. "if you're going to ask Congress for $80 billion and $60 billion of that is going to Iraq, it's going to be hard to focus on domestic issues such as education and health care reform."

Suhr said the speech continued Bush's themes of freedom and liberty.

"This speech said in very clear and direct terms that this is not going to be a lame duck presidency," Suhr said.

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on Feb. 3 2005.