January 25, 2007	Thursday	Muharram 05, 1428

WASHINGTON, Jan 24: Cursed by rock-bottom poll ratings, chided by Congress's new Democratic masters, and bound up in Iraq's agony, President George Bush on Tuesday offered little to loosen his political straitjacket in his State of the Union address, analysts said.

Mr Bush once strode into the House of Representatives bear pit unchallenged, using the annual speech to ram home his mastery over cowering political rivals, skewering US enemies and slotting them into an `axis of evil’. But on Tuesday the president was on a precipice, with public support haemorrhaging over the unpopular war in Iraq, and for the first time in his six White House years, in the minority in a Congress run by Democrats.

Mr Bush warned Americans of a `nightmare scenario’ that would result from defeat in Iraq, unveiled a new plan to cut gasoline use by 20 per cent in 10 years, and produced a new plea to overhaul immigration laws.

But the president, with only two years left in his second term, and the 2008 presidential field sprinting out of the starting blocks, bore little resemblance to the man who was unchallenged in US politics -- as recently as two years ago.

“The only resource he had left, was his rhetoric,” said Buddy Howell, an expert on presidential speechmaking at Purdue University.

“He needed to hit a home run and he did not,” said Howell, using a baseball metaphor to argue Bush needed a knockout blow to rescue his declining presidency.

Professor Steven Smith, a specialist on congressional politics at Washington University, St Louis, said Bush's delivery mirrored his perilous position.

“This was an extremely low-key speech, there was a bit of a drone to his speech at times, which I think reflected not defeatism, but a sense of realism,” Smith said.

“This was a president who has viewed his role as being a cheerleader over the years, this speech had none of that.”

In a reminder of Bush's lame duck status, television cameras often lingered on Democrats and Republicans plotting to grab the keys to the White House.—AFP