One Year After 'Axis of Evil'

W H E E L I N G, W. Va., Jan. 28 -- As the citizens of this shabby old city consider this year's State Of the Union Address, many are still remembering last year's speech.

Then, President Bush not only connected the dots from North Korea through Iraq to Iran — an "axis of evil" — but summarized his objectives with this brief promising assurance:

"We will win this war," he said. "We'll protect the homeland and we will revive the economy."

It was a tough speech for tough times, but tough times are nothing new to this place, once one of the richest and prettiest cities in the country.

Now, it isn't.

Local steel-mills have closed or are in deep financial trouble, coal mining just isn't what it used to be and on any given afternoon, the odds are that an artillery shell fired straight down Main Street would hit exactly nobody. The place is pretty much deserted, lined with dozens of vacant storefronts and office buildings.

But most people in Wheeling voted for Bush and many are reluctant to blame him, eager to back him and willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. For example, at a breakfast restaurant on the outskirts of the city, Russ Riggs, formerly a Republican but now an independent, said he thinks the president has "a very difficult job to do and he's doing it as well as he can."

‘A Moral Person’

Nearby, Mary Jo Terry, a registered Democrat who supports Bush, rates him as an effective leader. "I think he's a moral person. I think he's much better than his predecessor — and in that respect, it's easy to look up to him," she said.

At the same table, her Republican friend, Becky Van Pelt, agrees. "Seeing him as a family man and as a Christian means a lot to me," she said — and she says she feels safer now than she did last January.

Nurse Christy Tarr, the infection control coordinator at Wheeling Hospital, says she's very impressed with how quickly Bush's smallpox vaccination program is shaping up. "Without a doubt in my mind," she said, "this is one he has followed through on. I think they're doing a marvelous job. It's an awesome task for the number of hospitals, county health departments and states that all have to coordinate — and it is definitely a coordinated effort — and they have, from what I've gathered, done that in a very short amount of time."