The term “state of the union,” if taken literally, would indicate that a speech with that given name would focus on the present condition of a union of sorts — such as the one we like to call America. President Bush obviously did not take to the literal meaning of the phrase.

With the success of the recent troop surge in Iraq, you’d think the president would have wanted to broaden his horizons a little bit, perhaps focus on the various other issues facing our country. There are a couple of nasty rumors going around that, as an American, I would liked to have heard more about from my leader. Terms such as “economic recession” and “global warming” are not just buzzwords from the stump speeches of campaigning politicians. They are real problems that have been ignored by the current administration and this stance was reinforced during the most recent State of the Union address given by the president last week.

A blogger for Foreign Policy magazine posted the number of times certain words appeared in all of President Bush’s State of the Union addresses since his initial delivery in 2002. The numbers tell the complete story. In his first State of the Union, Iraq was mentioned twice. Last week, an astounding 39 times. The other words appearing most often are “security,” “terrorists,” “al-Qaida” and “freedom.” People called former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani the one-issue candidate. Well ladies and gentlemen, allow me to coin the phrase: a “one-issue president.”

It’s not as if we don’t know what’s going on in Iraq; we’re bombarded with news from all forms of media everyday with that knowledge. We know the surge has helped and that America is committed to victory in Iraq, whatever that means. However, it’s inexcusable that climate change was never mentioned until 2007, and this year only once.

Taxes and the economy were mentioned six times. The environment came in with a whopping single mention. With Congress now deep into deliberations of a tax relief program of over $100 billion to help stimulate our sagging economy, I would have liked to have hear a little more about that plan. All we were told is that it would help a lot of people and it was important to pass quickly.

On the heels of news that America shed 17,000 jobs in January, it would have been nice to hear more about how our jobs will be protected so that tax cuts can actually provide relief. Unfortunately, there was no space for this information in the speech, because Iraq had to be mentioned 39 times.

America needs to take a lesson from the British government and force the leader of the country to face open questioning from our elected representatives about the state of the country instead of delivering a speech so squeaky clean and polished that its authors must have advised Bush to gargle Windex before he delivered it.

The sort of transparency that open questioning could forcefully create would help reinforce the notion that our government is still accountable to the people who fund its programs and elect those in charge, a notion that has taken a beating during the Bush presidency.