Anticipating the Speech

Peggy Noonan gives some advice to the president regarding the upcoming State of the Union Address: give us some cold, hard facts. Now is not the time for more passion which at this juncture would be bombast. The time for ringing oratory has passed. Noonan wonders whether the administration has not become too reflexively secretive, eschewing necessary and unnecessary public transmissions alike. She also intimates that the president knows something about Saddam's intentions that he hasn't shared with the country yet. Now would be a good time.