President Bush offered an inspiring and ambitious vision last night of America’s international mission, saying, “We seek the end of tyranny in our world.” He offered encouraging and somewhat detailed words directly to the people of Iran, saying that they are being “held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people.” He told Iranians that America “hopes one day to be the closest of friends with a free and democratic Iran.”

But most of the president’s speech was devoted to domestic policy, and here Mr. Bush seemed unusually lacking in boldness and principle. He asked for a bipartisan commission to tackle the effect of baby boomer retirements on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. But Mr. Bush already appointed a Social Security commission back in 2001. The answer isn’t passing the buck to another commission. Mr. Bush omitted the call for fundamental tax reform that he campaigned on in 2004. He did call for making his tax cuts permanent, which would be terrific, but stopped short of a broad overhaul that would simplify the tax code.

On energy, Mr. Bush sounded like a central planner. Or – forgive us – like Al Gore declaring war on the internal combustion engine. “We must also change how we power our automobiles,” he said. “We will increase our research in better batteries for hybrid and electric cars, and in pollution-free cars that run on hydrogen. We will also fund additional research in cutting edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn but from wood chips, stalks, or switch grass.” Grass, indeed.

The president might want to read “The Bottomless Well,” the Bill Gates-endorsed book by Peter Huber and Mark Mills that says, “It rarely makes any sense for regulators to try to promote ‘more efficient’ technologies, because given the fecundity of technology, there’s no reason to suppose that regulators will reliably choose the right technologies to promote, or the right time to promote them,” and, “when radically more efficient technologies do emerge, they are quickly embraced by paying customers without any need for government mandates.”

Some of this may be chalked up to Mr. Bush’s desire to reach out to Democrats. Mr. Bush gave friendly mentions to the Democratic Roosevelt, to Truman and Kennedy, and even President Clinton and called for “bipartisan answers” that “put aside partisan politics.” The one Republican Mr. Bush invoked, other than his own father, was Reagan, and it’s no coincidence that the strongest points in the speech were when Mr. Bush reached for Reagan-like optimism. “We must never give in to the belief that America is in decline, or that our culture is doomed to unravel. The American people know better than that. We have proven the pessimists wrong before – and we will do it again,” he said. Americans, he added, are “optimistic about our country.”