This year I bothered to watch the State of the Union address and the Republican response, which I would normally just read later or on the following morning, and I don’t think I gained much from the viewing. There were some briefly amusing moments. At one point, Obama called for comprehensive immigration reform, the camera switched to McCain, and McCain wasn’t applauding. He just sat there stone-faced. That tended to be the way most of Obama’s micro-proposals were greeted on the right side of the chamber, which isn’t all that surprising.

Like many others, I found the attempt to compare national unity to the discipline of a military unit to be unnerving and strange. Unfortunately, if the military is one of the very few institutions that the public trusts and respects, the idea that everything else should be more like the military might start to catch on, which would be a far worse mistake than the more common error of thinking that the government should function just like a business. The idea that “we” should all put aside our differences for the sake of “the mission” assumes that “we” all know what “the mission” is, and it also takes for granted that none of “us” can opt out of “the mission” but must simply do our part in making sure that “the mission” is successful.

Those sections of the speech were quite illiberal. I fear that this is one of the side-effects of perpetual war: civilian leaders become so accustomed to being “at war” (whether there is a legal state of war or not) that they start to forget about the dangers of militaristic rhetoric or militarized policies. One of the most unfortunate developments of the Bush years was the refrain that one heard from hawkish Republicans that George Bush was “our” Commander-in-Chief, as if all citizens were all in the military and owed him unquestioning allegiance. That, too, was complete nonsense, but it was part of the general atmosphere of those years in which criticism of Bush’s blunders and bungled handling of major decisions was treated as a sort of mutiny.

Mitch Daniels’ response was a good one for him in that it was instantly forgettable. He didn’t make any big mistakes, and he delivered the speech about as well as one would expect under the circumstances. He fared better than Jindal. It was his standard speech on themes of debt and fiscal responsibility, which was fine, but there was not much in it that is going to generate any interest outside of the small circle of Daniels boosters.