State Of The Union Address Essay :: essays research papers

State of the Union Address EssayPresident Clinton has declared that "the competitor of our time is inaction,"pledging to forge bipartisan agreements on a balanced budget and campaignfinance reform within months, and to lead a " subject field press out" to improveeducation by the turn of the century. Education, Clinton vowed, would be his"number-one priority for the next four years," and he devoted the longestportion of his address to this. He appealed for "national standards" to improvestudent performance and pledged to promote such standards with voluntary testsprepared by the federal government.Most of the ideas Clinton presented last night first appeared as poll-tested proposals in his reelection campaign last fall expanding the 1993"Family and Medical Leave Act" to include time off from work for parent-teacherconferences school curfews and tax credit and deductions to subsidize collegeeducation. But he presented these ideas using more en com shoting and urgentlanguage than before."We face no imminent threat, but we do have an resistance The enemy of ourtime is inaction," Clinton declared at the start of his speech. He finished, ashe did in last months address, by invoking the symbolism that the nation isabout to pass into a new millennium. "We dont have a moment to waste," he said."Tomorrow, there will be just over 1,000 days until the year 2000. . . . One gibibyte days to work together."The speech proved shorter than predicted and far more organized anddisciplined than some of his previous appearances before Congress. The annualspeeches to Congress have served as markers of Clintons ideological migration.In 1993, he announced that government must do more and unveiled a raft of big-government proposals, including a $30 million "stimulus package" that was vastlymore expensive than any single proposal he offered last night.