US President reports to his nation

US president Barack Obama delivered his first State-of-the-Union address in Washington DC on Wednesday.

Speaking about the forthcoming state of the Union address of Barack Obama in one of our programs two days ago, we tried to forecast what the US President was going to talk about. Our forecast turned out to be mainly correct.  First, Obama drew attention to the poor economic situation of the country one year ago when he came to power.  It is quite logical  - against this background the measures his administration took in the first 12 months of his presidency to lead the country out of the crisis could look more significant. Considering that there are few real achievements to talk about, the new US administration managed to save the national banking sector and car-making industry as well as to reform the Health care sector. At the same time the president made many mistakes and failed to keep many of his promises. First of all this concerns the growing rate of unemployment in the country.   We should give the US President credit for openly admitting his mistakes.

In order to improve the situation Obama proposed a number of new economic measures, in particular - to provide support to small and medium businesses, to freeze state costs in the next 3 years and to launch some new federal programs. By doing this the president hopes to cut the huge deficit of the federal budget and to reduce the record foreign debt.

As we had expected, Obama paid little attention to the foreign policy in his State-of-the Union address. He mentioned a complicated situation in Afghanistan and confirmed its commitment to withdraw all US troops from Iraq by autumn. The US president touched upon a more decisive fight against international terrorism and the growing nuclear threat.  In this respect he stressed the importance of the new strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia which is expected to be signed soon.

It should be noted that delivering the address Obama looked confident and even made some jokes from time to time.  He tried to persuade his compatriots that he is able to solve any problems and time is all he needs, which is not an original move. This has always been the goal of any US president who has addressed his nation. That is why the conclusion of Obama’s address was also pretentious.

By tradition, the oppositional party, in this case the Republicans, gave its assessment to the president’s State-of-the-Union address. This time its position was voiced by governor of Virginia State Bob McDonnel.