In his big speech, he attempted to do just that when he delivered the evening's most memorable line, "America is addicted to oil."

This was a switch from May of 2001 when Ari Fleischer, the president's spokesman, said that the right to consume massive energy resources was "an American way of life." I wasn't expecting any great departure after hearing Bush advisers and allies talk all day about "security" and "optimism" and about how the president was going to "change the tone" (again). But Bush did change the subject, at least a bit. Tomorrow we're all going to be talking about the "cellulosic ethanol" from corn stalks and "switch grass."

Even if some of the president's proposals sounded like futuristic gobbledygook, we now seem poised for a national debate about American energy dependence. That's more than we've come to expect from these dreary annual clapfests. Democrats might actually engage on this topic, instead of responding in the purely political way they did to last year's Social Security proposal. For a president who came from the oil business and who still has many friends and backers in the industry, putting this initiative at the top of his agenda took some guts.