Political speeches aren’t always about thrilling the crowd with new ideas. Sometimes reinforcing the status quo helps to reassure people of their place in the world, that their deeds are good, that life, with just a few tweaks here and there, is going swimmingly.

But when your country is engaged in an undefined, bloody war, when seven Democratic presidential contenders are nipping at your feet and your disapproval rating is a solid 45 percent, status quo is the last thing you want.

And that was the only thing President Bush delivered Tuesday night in his State of the Union speech.

Freedom may be the great stronghold of our country, but to use the word indiscriminately and without explanation is to weaken the idea itself. It’s all too easy to say the enemies of freedom will fail and the Iraqi people will live in freedom.

Bush himself said that for diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible. To make freedom cliche is patently un-American, yet Bush proposed it as a cure-all the same way a quack doctor bottles water and sells it as medicine. Perhaps a specific plan would grant a bit more credibility than overusing a word that is rapidly losing its meaning.

As for the rest of the speech, we learned that abstinence prevents sexually transmitted diseases, steroid-using professional athletes are poor role models for America’s youth, the Middle East is a place of despair, Congress ought to be wise with money, a government-run health system is a bad idea and that God values dignity and value in married people, so long as they’re heterosexual.

Maybe next time he’ll tell us puppy dogs are happy and rainy days are sad.

There were bright spots. The prisoner re-entry initiative, which helps to expand job training, placement services and transitional housing to released inmates, sounds promising, so long as funding isn’t cut to fund more defense contractors.

Forgive our skepticism — it’s hard to trust someone whose general ethos is to cut taxes, eliminate social programs, and then spend billions on a war and an additional $23 million on drug testing in schools. Fiscal conservatism isn’t exactly a hallmark of the Bush brigade, no matter how much he talks about limiting discretionary spending.

He’s a better public speaker than he was three years ago. But the rhetoric hasn’t changed, nor has the glaring disrespect for the intelligence of the American people. Bush had a unequaled chance to level with his constituents on everything from the Iraq war to the jobless rate, and instead he chose to hide behind broad, meaningless political phrases.