Amy's Robot

At a viewing party in Costa Mesa sponsored by MIKA CDC, a Christian nonprofit, 57-year-old high school U.S. history and economics teacher Paul Stroud said, "We're going to go bankrupt and my students are going to end up in an economy that has the rug pulled out from under them. I think George Bush Jr. is probably the worst president in the history of this country."

Anne Jowaisas, an independent 38-year-old nanny from Richmond, said, "In terms of his speech, it was a good speech and he delivered it pretty strongly. But I had a lot of skepticism on what he had to say." She said that Bush's plan to reduce the deficit by 2009 by cutting programs raised plenty of questions, asking, "how is all this going to balance out?"

World War II veteran Joe Benavidez from Albuquerque said, "He wants to cut taxes and do good on the deficit? How do you do that? He'll cut a lot of programs — programs people need. Talk is cheap."

After Bush mentioned the Gulf Coast in one or two sentences deep into his speech, Tom Short, 75, a Republican and a Korean War veteran in New Orleans exclaimed, "Did I miss something? I think that's a crying shame."

Jesse Samora, 21, a political science and history major at Metropolitan State College of Denver, treated Bush's speech like the Super Bowl, hanging out with friends and barbecuing hamburgers. They leaped out of their seats to cheer Bush when he said "hindsight alone is not wisdom" and "second guessing is not a strategy," as he referred to recent criticism of the war in Iraq.

Samora said the speech only strengthened his belief that Bush was doing a good job protecting the country from terrorists. "As long as I can go to sleep at night and know I'm safe," said Samora.