On Tuesday evening, President Clinton is scheduled to appear before a joint session of the US Congress to give the annual State of the Union address. It is supposed to be a time to survey the achievements of the past twelve months and outline plans for the coming year, bringing together divergent policies and issues into a central coherent message. But this year, as Gordon Corera explains, the president will be fighting for his political life.

It is possible that President Clinton will not even mention in passing or acknowledge in any way, the vast scandal swirling around him, providing for a surreal occasion in the US Congress. But the allegations of an affair with Monica Lewinsky and the alleged cover-up will be in everybody's minds and could overshadow everything else the President says.

Only a week or two ago, the view from Washington looked very different. President Clinton was on a political high. He was enjoying approval ratings of 60% and the economy firing on all cylinders, with inflation, unemployment and crime all down and welfare rolls plummeting. But President Clinton still remained dissatisfied.

In search of a place in history

There had been criticisms last year that the president seemed distracted from his job and was spending too much time playing golf. But then in the first week of January he came out all guns blazing, gearing up for a State of the Union Address on January 27th, which he hoped would define his presidency and establish his legacy.

When he was asked in an interview what he thought he would be remembered for as President, he said "I think the most important question will be, did I really prepare the country for the 21st century ... Did I strengthen the Union? Did I broaden opportunity? Did we deepen freedom? Did we leave this country in better shape for the new century?"

Looking to the future

The focus of the address will be "strengthening the nation for the 21st century". The president will talk about his plans to extend medical care to the near-elderly and to those children not covered by insurance, as well as a bill of rights for health care in general. Child care, the environment and the expansion of the peace corps are also set to figure in the speech.

Clinton is also expected to outline his plans for "Educational Opportunity Zones" to focus resources to urban schools. The plans mark a shift towards a more activist, liberal agenda than seen in the past few years, partly to help heal the fractured rifts within the President's own Democratic party, problems caused by what liberals in Congress see as the president's periodic rightward shifts.

Classic Clinton

The proposals that we have seen so far are typical of the Bill Clinton style: small but part of a bigger picture, incremental but allowing grandiose claims, and cleverly targeted to politically wrong-foot his Republican opponents. It is a strategy that he has learnt to follow since the defeat of his ambitious health-care plan in the first term and defeat in the Congressional mid-term elections of 1994, which gave control of Congress to his opponents.

The proposals set out earlier this year put President Clinton's opponents on the defensive. If Republicans opposed them they would have appeared harsh and compounded public stereotypes of them as lacking in compassion, a dangerous position to be in with mid-term elections for Congress this year. The November elections will see the whole of the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate come up for election.

Fears of a lame duck presidency

But now the scandal has debilitated the White House and the fear is that it will deprive the President of the weight and authority he needs to pull together coalitions in Congress, not just on domestic issues like tobacco and social policy, but also key foreign policy issues, like support for the IMF and the Asian bail-out, the middle east peace process, free trade, NATO expansion, Bosnia and Iraq.

Traditionally the State of the Union establishes key themes, in 1995 President Clinton came out with the much quoted phrase "the era of big government is over". But the challenge this year is far greater than any could have predicted. If there is a lukewarm response inside the chamber, from the assembled members of government, Congress and the judiciary, Clinton's credibility and authority could be fatally wounded.

A generous response from the audience and the wider American public could signal the start of Clinton pulling himself up, and once more earning the moniker he picked up in the 1992 campaign, of the "comeback kid."
 

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