Analysis: Barack Obama the underdog Barack Obama has had to come down from the Olympian heights to recast himself as a street fighter, even an underdog - and he did it well. His political task last night was to gloss over a thin record of accomplishment and chart a course towards midterm elections in November that a deeply demoralised Democratic party is starting to dread. He admitted he and his team had made mistakes in their first year even if most of the errors were left unspecified other than a failure to communicate his aims for health reform. But he did not abandon his big goals on health, financial reform or climate change and made the Republicans look like the party of "no". Related LinksState of the Union speech: main points And the key line from the speech was one of defiance: "We do not give up. We do not quit. We don’t allow fear or division to break our spirit.” Few of his supporters would have forecast such a shrunken agenda a year ago, when Mr Obama’s sweeping promises of change still seemed equal to the monumental challenges posed by a collapsing economy. Since then recovery has been sluggish, unemployment has been stuck at 10 per cent and Republican efforts to sabotage health, financial and energy legislation have been relentless. But aides said Mr Obama had lost none of his ambition and still planned to change the way Washington does business – but in reality he is more dependent than ever on the 535 members of Congress who crammed into the House of Representatives last night. To keep alive any hope of a reformist presidency he must now find a way to create working majorities - by working more closely with moderate Republicans at the risk of alienating his own base or by forcing through reforms with a procedure known as budget reconciliation that would need only 51 votes in the Senate. The fate of healthcare reform remains the vital test of Mr Obama’s leadership. “He’s invested too much capital in healthcare already, and with an eye to his legacy he’s going to insist that Congress follow through,” Professor Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia said. “But that would be a great mistake, because rightly or wrongly voters have decided he’s tried to do too much too soon on things they are not really concerned about. It’s the economy that matters now." In a sign that he does understand this, Mr Obama is expected to shelve Nasa's latest lunar exploration programme in his new budget - a move greeted by the Orlando Sentinel yesterday with the headline "The Un-Kennedy".
Iran produces armed copy of Bladerunner 51 speedboat Iran says it will mass produce armed replicas of the British-built speedboat hailed among the fastest in the world, for its navy in the Gulf. Read Article
The Death of American VirtueBy Ken Gormley Crown, 789 pages, $35Mr. Gormley interviewed the former president three times in 2004-05 and found a man still seething at the vast right-wing conspiracy that he blames for bringing the stain of impeachment to his presidency. "They're on a crusade," Mr. Clinton says. "God has ordained them to crush the infidels. . . . Ken Starr was their errand boy, and he danced to their tune, just as hard as he could dance." Read Book Review
Conservatives: Only friendly media allowedHoward Kurtz | Media NotesSome of the most conservative and combative Republicans running for Congress are convinced that the media have it in for them. Read Article
