Has there ever been less buzz surrounding a State of the Union address? President Bush delivers his eighth and final annual speech to Congress this evening, and there is a feeling of irrelevancy to it all thanks to the ever-encroaching primary calendar that's been swallowing up news cycles. Add to that Ted Kennedy's not-so-coincidentally-timed endorsement of Obama this morning, and you're looking at a SOTU speech relegated to the background until 9 p.m. this evening.

On the environment and energy front, don't expect anything like last year's speech, when Bush uttered the words "climate change" for the first time in a SOTU address and called for increased fuel efficiency standards. As the Washington Post recounts this morning, that's one of the few Bush initiatives that went anywhere last year, even though the resulting new efficiency standards of 25 miles per gallon to 35 mpg by 2020 are hardly monumental.

Early indications are that tonight's speech will focus mainly on the economy, Iraq and Bush's proposed $150 billion tax rebate. In other words, if you're waiting for an "addicted to oil" comment akin to one that raised eyebrows in 2006, you may want to wait until the 2009 speech from our next president.

While it's possible we'll hear something energy-related, the only real certainty about tonight is that there will be a lot of clapping.