Newport-Mesa leaders hail president’s address

Paul Clinton

As a registered Democrat who recently moved to Costa Mesa from

Massachusetts, Christine Parker said President Bush’s State of the

Union address didn’t change her antiwar stance.

But it did improve her opinion of Bush’s leadership qualities, she

said from a booth inside Skosh Monahan’s Tuesday night after the

speech.

“If he’s going to lead us into war, we couldn’t find a better

leader,” the 49-year-old Parker said. “I would just like somebody to

be courageous enough to talk about nonviolence.”

Other denizens gathered at the local watering hole to tip back a

cold one, while taking in Bush’s historic speech, also said they were

impressed by Bush’s forceful presentation of the case for war,

package of improvements for the ailing economy and ambitious social

proposals to rein in AIDS in Africa.

But the local audience seemed to respond strongest to Bush’s views

about Iraq and its leader Saddam Hussein. Doing nothing, Bush said,

would be disastrous.

“Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam is not a

strategy,” Bush said. “It is not an option.”

Jim Toledano, the former head of the Orange County Democratic

Party and a Costa Mesa attorney, watched the speech elsewhere and

described it as “rather staggering” and, at times, far-fetched.

“It was a typical Bush speech, lots of nice platitudes,” Toledano

said. “I didn’t think he made his case [for war]. He tried to wrap

himself in the evil of Hussein and the goodness of our character.”

Newport-Mesa’s Republican congressional leaders who observed the

State of the Union firsthand, not surprisingly, endorsed the speech.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who represents Costa Mesa and wrote

speeches for President Reagan, said it was historic.

“It was one of the most inspiring speeches I’ve ever heard,”

Rohrabacher said.

Rep. Chris Cox, who represents Newport Beach, however, cautioned

against attaching too much importance to it yet.

“It’s not for us to judge how history will view [the speech],” Cox

said. “It’s easier to say that this was a very important speech at

this moment.”

* PAUL CLINTON covers the environment, business and politics. He

may be reached at (949) 764-4330 or by e-mail at

[email protected].