The US State of the Union address is consummate political theater, the highest expression of democratic showmanship. It's full of rousing words - bigger, faster, better - and lofty phrases that take flight like balloons released at a political rally - red, white and blue - that go gently leaping into the night, soaring, glistening, ebullient and full of promise.

United States President Barack Obama's Jan 25 speech had a staged quality, not just because of the tight scripting, the lights and cameras, but because applause is so much part of the show that it is written into the White House transcript of the event. It's tea-leaf reading time, as pundits ponder protocol and seating arrangements, a time for trotting out model workers and latter-day public heroes characters whose decency and integrity serves to sanitize, by association, the wily politicians who talk about them.

Despite the well-presented rhetoric, President Obama contradicts himself as surely as he looks left and then to the right, then back again, keeping up with the teleprompter. If he appears to be speaking out of both sides of his mouth, it's testament to wanting it both ways.

After green-lighting trillions for the corrupt on Wall Street, he acknowledges the rich, too, should be taxed. He wants to cut taxes and increase spending. He invites the Pentagon to find some fat to trim, but sends them to war, effectively a blank check for endless spending. He cites the greatness of American colleges - part of what makes them great is stubborn independence that keeps the government and military at arm's length - but wants the military back on campus. He jokes about his government's intrusive body checks at airports as a plug for trains yet to be built. He's shocked at a random incident of violence at home but brushes over the chronic violence of the US war effort abroad.

Politically correct rhetoric about racial diversity and sexual tolerance in the US armed forces distracts from ill-considered, inhumane military adventurism abroad. Obama conjures up a misleading vision of American troops leaving Iraq with their heads high, failing to acknowledge the tens of thousands left on their backs, dazed and confused, shipped out after losing life and limb in a gratuitous war. And after nine years of fruitless effort to destroy the Taliban, he's calling for more bombs over the Hindu Kush.

One clear dividend of President Hu Jintao's recent state visit to Washington is that China-bashing, a popular contact sport for opportunistic political hacks in the capital, was written out of the script.

China does figure in the speech, and in largely positive light, as a goad to American competitiveness. China is "building faster trains and newer airports", it has solar research and faster computers, it has made efforts in education and it is supporting new jobs in the US.