Tonight, President Bush will deliver his fifth State of the Union address.

What Americans will hear, however, will not be the state of the union, but the state of the Bush administration, neatly packaged by PR professionals and designed to detract from the harsh realities of a country adrift like a rudderless ship.

With 9/11 as his backdrop, Bush will once again attempt to sow seeds of distrust and discord among the American people. He will put forth no new ideas. Instead, he will rehash the Rovian campaign tactics that allowed him to squeak out two narrow victories.

He won’t tell you that the focus of his State of the Union speech is to reverse the catastrophic political damage that his incompetence and Republican scandals have done to the Republican Party and to the country. He will not mention the failed Medicare prescription drug plan or that more Americans are uninsured than when he took office.

He will not mention cuts to student loans, Head Start or a myriad of other social programs without which more and more Americans are increasingly sliding into poverty.

He will not mention that the gap between the wealthiest Americans and the poorest Americans is growing exponentially.

He will not mention the dwindling middle class. He will not mention that his administration has done nothing to lessen our dependence on Middle East oil. He will not mention that Big Oil is swimming in record profits as the price of gasoline and home-heating oil continues to rise.

He will not mention negative job growth or the ballooning deficit.

He will not mention that he has been woefully inept at catching Osama bin Laden. Instead, he’ll use bin Laden’s most recent tape as an excuse for suspending civil liberties and expanding government intrusion in our daily lives.

He will not mention that the world is less stable, less safe and more vulnerable to terrorism since he invaded Iraq. He will not mention that instead of Jeffersonian democracy, his reckless meddling in the Middle East has given birth to radical fundamentalist Islamism and Jihadism in Iraq, Palestine, Iran and Lebanon.

He will not mention his grab for power, his attempt to supplant democracy at home, to circumvent the Constitution and to create an über-executive branch.

He will not mention that he has overseen the most corrupt White House in the history of the United States, turning a blind eye to criminal activity at every level of his administration.

He will not mention that he has signed every bill that the most corrupt Republican-controlled Congress in history presented him – fat with pork and earmarks that benefit big business to the detriment of the average American.

He will not mention that the majority leader of the House was forced to resign his leadership post after being indicted for money laundering or that the majority leader of the Senate is the target of a Justice Department and SEC investigations for insider trading.

He won’t mention his own relationship with convicted Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, with whom he held meetings at the White House, and who delivered hundreds of thousands of dollars to the president’s coffers.

He won’t tell you that he enters his sixth year with an approval rating 25 points lower than his predecessor, Bill Clinton, at the same point in his presidency.

He will not accept responsibility for a failed Iraq policy or for non-existent domestic policies. He will not acknowledge his wholesale rape of the Constitution. He will not acknowledge that he broke the law to spy on Americans.

He won’t tell you that a growing number of constitutional scholars, including the one that Republicans used to bolster their case against President Clinton, have determined that his wiretapping program was illegal and un-Constitutional.

He will not mention the empty promises he made to victims of Hurricane Katrina. He will not tell you that he has spent – squandered – more rebuilding Iraq than he has rebuilding the Gulf Coast.

He won’t tell you that the Pentagon’s own study suggests that the military is overextended and at risk of breaking. He won’t mention that while pursuing an agenda of personal vigilantism against Saddam Hussein in Iraq, he allowed Iran and North Korea to grow increasingly more dangerous.

He won’t mention any of that.

Instead, fearing a political revolution in the 2006 congressional elections – and bowing to the pressures of his party and the realities of polls that show Americans are ready to send Republicans home – he will speak to the lowest common denominators of fear, insecurity, homophobia, xenophobia and every other phobia he can muster.

He will say, “Trust me! I will make you safer,” which is Orwellian Bushspeak for “every man for himself.”

He will conjure up ghosts of 9/11. But, he will tell you not to look behind the curtain. He will use the same feats of verbal prestidigitation he used to lead this country into an unnecessary war and to make us believe that only he can make us safe.

President Bush’s arrogance, cowardice and delusions of grandeur have long erased any sense of public humility or personal accountability. With the same sense of juvenile invincibility and self-destructive bravado that only megalomaniacs, petty despots and alcoholics can claim, he will ask us to suspend belief, capitulate our constitutional rights, and view him as the great protector.

As you watch the State of the Union address tonight, don’t just listen to what he says, listen to what he doesn’t say. Therein lays the true state of the union.

George Henson is lecturer of Spanish. He may be contacted at [email protected].