President Bush had hinted for the week leading up to what would be his second-most important speech to date – after the post-Sept. 11 response to terrorism – that he would be looking less for agreement through compromise and more to win support through being bold. He met that goal partly Tuesday, especially in his detailed accounting of Saddam Hussein’s evil, but he will need to go further overall to turn bold words into bold action.

The four major themes of the speech were the tax cut, Medicare, the environment, mostly cleaner cars, and the war on terrorism, specifically against Iraq. There were several favors for the home team – a bashing of trial lawyers and their malpractice suits, a demand to ban a form of late-term abortion and an insistence that government should reach beyond the laws and wallets of the public and “transform America, one heart and soul at a time” through faith-based initiatives. And he was compassionate: His announcement to support AIDS treatment and prevention Africa and the Caribbean with $10 billion in new money over five years, for a total of $15 billion, is a serious commitment and should receive enthusiastic support in Congress. There was also new money for drug treatment and renewed support for his USA Freedom Corps.

The president was clearly and properly focused on Iraq, so even major issues such as the tax cut didn’t attract the attention it might have in a less momentous year. The $670 billion cut is even larger when the money the states will also turn back because of it is rolled in, but the president let his argument ride on the ideas of trickle-down growth and the suffering that comes from the double taxation of dividends. However true both may be, the former is a tough sell to the public and the latter already has doubters in his own party, including Maine’s two senators.

Similarly, the hydrogen car proposal rests on a large number – $1.2 billion in immediate R&D – and the trust in government that something good will happen because of it; in this case, that cars someday will emit water instead of carbon monoxide. A couple of foreign car manufacturers, whose governments support tough standards for fuel efficiency, already are well along in the development stage for hydrogen cars, so the president’s research subsidy should be of particular interest to U.S. automakers, who remember the beating their industry took in the 1970s from foreign competition. Another sign of a compassionate president.

On Medicare, the president sought nothing less than the wholesale privatization of the major form of health coverage for the elderly. But he will face a Congress that has yet to pass even a prescription drug benefit for this program and is far from prepared to overhaul the entire system, as the president’s plan would do through financial or benefit penalties for those who remained in the fee-for-service portion of Medicare.

Maine’s failed experiment with Medicare Plus Choice a couple of years ago could serve as a guide for the dangers that lie in the president’s plan. The Senate was close to passing a more flexible, more generous Medicare drug plan last year before election-time politics killed its chances. President Bush would gain far more support if he would return to that plan short-term and seek the larger overhaul afterwards. Sen. Olympia Snowe, who has been working to build support for such a plan since 1999, said she is concerned “that the president’s focus on on ways to reform Medicare could hamper our efforts to pass comprehensive prescription coverage.” Given the inertia last year in Congress on this issue, it is a fair concern.

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As expected, the longest and most dramatic portion of the speech was devoted to Iraq, and the president would do well to focus his boldness on this agenda and keep focused on the highly complex connections and possible responses to terrorism – and terrorism’s possible responses to U.S. action. He repeated in detail some of the missing Iraqi biological, chemical and nuclear weaponry listed weeks ago by Secretary of State Colin Powell, described the horrors of life under

Saddam Hussein and warned this nation’s allies that he was willing, reluctant but willing, to go it alone in Iraq. But key parts of the speech were missing: Why now? Do any reluctant allies have legitimate concerns? What are the risks in acting, especially acting alone?

Sen. Susan Collins had the right response shortly after the speech: “I am hopeful that the administration will continue to work with the United Nations and our allies to strengthen the inspection process by adding more inspectors and more time, and by providing them with further information about suspected sites.” The president has begun to state his case, but he hasn’t made it yet and until he does fully, the best bet is to intensify the inspection process and seek the broadest support possible for ousting Hussein.

The president has aimed high with his agenda for the year. His speech was, as he described the state of the nation, strong. But he will not achieve his goals by mere assertion. He has begun an ambitious agenda, but clearly faces the challenges of leading others in its direction and, of course, paying for both

war and new domestic programs. The administration’s willingness to engage in serious debate over it with the public, the states, Congress and the world in the coming weeks will determine to what extent it succeeds.