U.S. President Bill Clinton has done it again. Last year, against the backdrop of revelations of his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, Mr. Clinton presented a State of the Union message that managed to transcend the scandal already swirling around the presidency. This year, the president returned to the House of Representatives to interrupt the impeachment trial that was being held in the opposite chamber. Once again, Mr. Clinton seemed all but oblivious to the drama unfolding around him as he appeared before the court about to sit in judgment on him, the U.S. Senate, and before the American people at large. In his speech, Mr. Clinton made it clear that he had no intention of bowing before the scandal. Instead, he has every intention of leading the country to the end of his term.
His reasoning is hard to fault. The United States is currently in the midst of its longest period of economic expansion since World War II. Unemployment is at historic lows, and the budget last year yielded a surplus of $70 billion, a surplus that is projected to continue into the foreseeable future. As a result, Mr. Clinton enjoys record high approval ratings from the American public, the spectacle of the Senate trial notwithstanding. According to one opinion poll, a stunning 81 percent say that his presidency has been a success.
As he did last year, the president seeded his speech with a host of small initiatives. That is a wise strategy at a time when more than half of Americans seem to believe that the country is heading in the right direction. If Mr. Clinton has a vision of the country, it is of a smaller, more efficient government, capable of touching the lives of ordinary citizens without leaning too heavily on them. It is, oddly enough, a Republican vision of government, and the president's "purloining" of this notion is partly responsible for the GOP's animus toward Mr. Clinton.