G'day Penners, Wow, you really got yourselves a veritable Cicero of a president there! The guy can talk the knickers off an alectorate at a hundred yards. Some strategic work in there to use the surplus (which may not be quite as permanent a feature as his noble plans might imply) to lock in support from the Dem. left and the 'minorities'. That bit about the 'strong' state of the union chose its supporting data very carefully. Nothing about domestic debt, current account deficits, fiscal inflexibility and an all-round lack of mechanisms with which to forestall crises that threaten to come, tsunami-like, from the south (and, Henry, are we sure China has the wherewithal not to buckle before any such financial pressures?). The call for bipartisanship was good politics - anything to make the Republicans seem obsessed loners. Rather ambiguous on the degree to which social security would be invested on Wall St, I thought. Did anyone make more sense out of that bit? The basic wage bit would have instantly manufactured some young Democrats, I suppose - but I thought most of it was aimed at aging baby-boomers and rural America. The education programme sounded a bit wet and unspecific, I thought. Saddam and Castro got brickbats, but I didn't hear anything about Milosovic and likely US policy on Kosovo/Albania. And it looks like Clinton sees something useful to his ends in the UN - he bothered to force BB Gali out and put Anan in as general secretary, and now, gasp, is actually thinking of paying up the US subscription back-log! Perhaps the US, and neo-liberalism in general, are so on the nose these days that US foreign policy might best be mediated through the UN. And would I be right in thinking that Al Gore had a hand in some of this - his long-term thinking and electoral interests seemed well-represented, I thought. Waddyareckon? Cheers, Rob.
