In the distant future, when anthropologists unearth the fossilized remains of our nation, the records of presidential State of the Union addresses will paint a picture of a unified and uplifted country. Videos will characterize our people as being prone to giving standing ovations.

There are so many points that a president must cover with each speech – the trials and tribulations and victories abroad, the laws that must be enacted, amended, or better-enforced domestically, and possible solutions to whatever current crises that same president may have got the American people into.

President George W. Bush continues in the presidential tradition – but most telling of all of them, he continues the great and rich history of what has been left OUT of State of the Union addresses.

Bush hit all the points in his speech – he spoke about balancing the budget (even though it was balanced before he entered office), about energy concerns (the regulation of which he has rolled back time and again), education (which has suffered incalculably under his legislature – Dennis Hastert voting against cutting Stafford loan interest rates merely the last in a great legacy of putting more burden on the young).

He spent a great deal of time on the “War on Terror,” and he found a good opportunity to congratulate America’s first-ever female speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.

Yet, Bush remained totally silent about the environment. Our polar ice caps are melting, our global temperature rising, our carbon emissions growing worse and worse. The United States is the most egregious producer of greenhouse gasses, has withdrawn from the Kyoto protocol, and continues to pig-headedly ignore viable energy options like solar, wind and hydroelectric power. Bush’s mention of cutting U.S. gasoline consumption briefly brought up renewable and alternative fuel sources, but a serious plan would enumerate and elaborate on what those fuel sources will be and how Bush will give them priority. Bush’s reasoning behind cutting fuel use never even mentioned the environment – Bush’s concern was with eliminating our reliance on foreign oil.

Bush also made great ceremony in announcing his plans to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps active duty rosters by 92,000 people in the next five years. He said he would also ask for a volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps that could use “critical skills” to aid in missions abroad.

Bush did not say how he plans to recruit, train, feed, clothe and arm those 92,000. He also did not say anything about where those 92,000 young people will come from in a time when support for the war in Iraq is at its lowest and Army and Marine Corps recruiters have difficulty in meeting their quotas.

Bush called the Iraq war “the defining struggle of our time.” This State of the Union address also defines our time – by showing us exactly what our president knows we will all agree on and therefore will go neatly into his speech… and also by showing us the gaping problems that none of us dare give voice.