Here are some random thoughts on the president’s State of the Union Address.

The president said that balancing the budget is important and then he pledged to do so sometime in the next five years. Pardon me but that sounds like a less than serious commitment to fiscal conservatism. A bolder president would have announced that he was submitting a balanced budget in the next few weeks and defied the congress to engage in reckless deficit spending.

It seems that the president stole my line about the Iran-backed terror group, Hezbollah:”In recent times, it has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the Middle East. Many are known to take direction from the regime in Iran, which is funding and arming terrorists like Hezbollah – a group second only to al Qaeda in the American lives it has taken.”

That last bit about Hezbollah being only second to al Qaeda in taking American lives is a line I’ve been using in radio and television interviews for the past year. Maybe someone in the White House was listening. Or maybe great minds think alike.

On immigration reform, the president’s line “…without animosity and without amnesty” is a real gem. And whether the congress knows it or not, the president has just drawn a red line.

Among the guilty pleasures of the telecast was the always active face of the non-plussed Nancy Pelosi. Like a superannuated cheerleader, she would stand to applaud democratic talking points and stare grimly ahead when the president said something conservative. Someone should post on YouTube the spectacle of the new Speaker struggling to her feet to applaud the troops. It is funny and gets funnier the more you watch it.

Other accidental delights: catching senators Kennedy and McCain dozing off. This old men might help run the country, but it’s not easy for them to stay up past nine.

Perhaps the greatest surprise of the speech was the president’s recognition of four genuine American heroes. Talking to two of the president’s senior speech writers last spring, I was told bluntly that the president “didn’t like anecdotes.” I’ve known each of these speech writers for a least a decade and I know that they know the power of real and vivid examples to carry a political point from the printed page to people’s hearts. It was a technique that Ronald Reagan used in every State of the Union address and hundreds of other speeches. I told them that the president was losing the communications war and that part of the reason was his failure to use anecdotes. Their loyalty kept them from fully agreeing at the time. But, I wonder, watching the president’s address tonight if an internal White House debate has been won — and that Bush is now lifting a few moves from the Gipper’s playbook?