"The nation George W. Bush described in his final State of the Union address to Congress bore a fairly strong resemblance to the nation as we knew it back in, say, 2003, but it could not be passed off as a vision of the America we see in January 2008." "I bet the Republican candidates, in their heart of hearts, wish Bush hadn't given a State of the Union last night. It wasn't anything he said, but that he said it to a national audience." - Howard Kurtz STATE OF THE UNION, 2008: * Here's your top review by Tom Shales . * LATimes analysis: "a short-term scramble for a long-term legacy." * NYTimes analysis: familiar ideas and a return to domestic issues . * Soaring rhetoric and no apologies . * "Mr. Bush still has a year left - and many serious problems to address. It is time, finally, for him to put aside the partisanship, the bluster and the empty rhetoric. The state of the union is troubled . The nation yearns for leadership." * Finally, a last look from BAGnewsNotes . Ouch. "The Associated Press looks at Bush's Gallup Poll approval ratings from around the time of each State of the Union speech. From 2002 to present, there's been a steady decline: 84, 60, 53, 51,43, 36 - and now 32."