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...conservatives know something about President Bush that they didn't know about his father: He's a conservative who means it. So they trust him.

...Mr. Bush didn't promise new spending in the liberal mode; he didn't ask for spending on liberal targets and programs guided by liberal assumptions.

I generally enjoy Peggy very much, but this, unfortunately, is probably the worst column of hers that I've ever seen.
The hydrogen car, $400 billion more for Medicare, AIDS programs in Africa, and prescription drug benefits are all big goverrnment programs in matters in which the government has no business.
Big government = liberal. To say otherwise is Carvillian spin.

what seemed to me to tie his domestic agenda to his international agenda was protectiveness.

Hence: the President's bold initiatives to protect our borders from terrorists and Illegals?
The President has given every indication that he wants Illegals in this country, unless it too obviously inconveniences the War on Terror. His deportation record on Illegals is every bit as lackluster as President Clinton's.
Bush's coddling of Illegals can't be excused as something for which he hasn't found the time, though. As Peggy herself, said:

He told us he would be presenting his domestic agenda, a blueprint for the coming year, in his speech.
This struck me as counterintuitive, and odd. I asked how this decision had come about. He said he had made it early on in the preparation of the speech. He said he thinks a great nation can do many things at once, and that his domestic agenda is important.
< -snip- >

Then I thought, if the domestic program he unveils tonight seems connected to Iraq, and can be understood as an expression of the thinking that guides his decisions on Iraq--well, that would be big, and helpful.

If President Bush had the security of our borders in mind as a priority, one could certainly see how that would connect back to Iraq and the War on Terror.
Heck, most Americans see that already. Most politicians, the President included, are willfully blind to the connection.
It's great that the President correctly identifies the enemy in the international theater. The domestic phase of his State of the Union address was quite disappointing.
Even a writer as talented as Peggy Noonan can't put a bow on that and make it pretty.