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My favorite comment on last night’s State of the Union address comes from the Boston Globe’s front page headline: “President Urges Unity on Iraq“. Of course we are pretty united about Iraq: the consensus position among all Democrats and most Republicans is that the Iraq War has been a colossal failure and that the president’s plan to improve things is a horrible idea. At some point, leaders have to realize that no one is following in the direction they want to go, and run around to get ahead of the crowd moving the other way. Instead, President Bush is boldly leading himself and his Administration down a path that no one else wants to go. And he’s the one urging us to unite?

Of course, Iraq wasn’t the only topic discussed last night. President Bush also showed he had plenty of bad ideas on other issues as well. Take health care policy. The President wants more people to self-insure, by expanding “health savings accounts”. Health savings accounts are fine ideas to pay for regular doctor and dental visits, but they are horrible when it comes down to actually helping real families afford anything moderately expensive. In fact, from a societal standpoint they are detrimental. The whole point of insurance is to spread risk. None of us knows when we’ll get sick, so we all contribute to the fund so that whenever any of us gets sick, there will always be enough to pay for that person. You do this because you can’t reliably save up until you get sick; chances are good that you’ll get sick before you have money saved to pay for it. The best thing for the group is for everyone to contribute as much as they can into the general fund. Private Health Savings Accounts actually encourage people to contribute less.

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