Despite being his most detailed remarks on Cuba in four years, President Bush's speech Wednesday unfortunately signaled no change in policy.

His speech was delivered at the State Department before an audience of exiled Cuban dissidents and diplomats representing members of the Organization of American States. It came against a backdrop of Cuban President Fidel Castro's having been ill and out of action for a year, and government in Cuba having been passed formally to his brother Raul. Whether this qualifies as the beginning of a transition is hard to say. At the same time, it could have served as an occasion for the Bush administration to review its tired old policy toward Cuba -- waiting for Fidel to die.

There are plenty of reasons for a change in U.S. policy. The Cuban populace is progressively of an age that hardly remembers the inspiration for the island nation's revolution of the 1950s. It is a fact that the Cuban economy has not performed very well in providing its people a good life. In spite of what the Michael Moore film "Sicko" might suggest and the recent financial ministrations of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Cuba still lags badly, behind nearly all Latin American countries.

Some sectors of the American economy, particularly its farms, look forward to the day when U.S. embargoes against and barriers to trade with Cuba are eased or removed. A vigorous trade with Cuba would be part of a normal relationship; current bureaucratic blockage based on politics is not.

Instead of a change in U.S. policy, which could help American businesses and stimulate positive change inside Cuba, Mr. Bush proclaimed the usual exile-courting doctrine, including the unfounded claim that "calls for fundamental change are growing across the island." He called for the Cuban military not to help maintain the current regime in power when the day of judgment comes. He proposed the creation of a multibillion-dollar Freedom Fund for Cuba, to begin operation when the democratic transition begins (but he didn't say where the money would come from).

So the United States is promised another 15 months of the same outmoded policy, at least until the end of the Bush administration. The president's speech was obviously pitched at keeping the anti-Castro Cuban exiles in his favorite state -- Florida -- and elsewhere voting for and donating to Republicans. One glaring omission in his remarks on Cuba: the status of the U.S. naval base and prison at Guantanamo Bay.