Bush Aims to Use State of the Union Speech to Steal Democrats' Thunder

George Bush will gatecrash the Democratic primary election season tonight with an hour-long speech to the nation sprinkled with pledges designed to take the limelight from his opponents' campaign.

The annual state of the union speech is being delivered more than a week earlier than in the previous two years, partly to draw attention away from the Iowa caucus results, which were due to emerge early today.

"Was it planned? Yes. The fact that the Iowa caucus was going to be held on a certain date was not unknown to people in the White House," a Republican close to Mr Bush told the New York Times.

The live television event will reflect Mr Bush's advantages as the incumbent, juxtaposing images of internecine Democratic warfare with the grandeur of the presidential address before a respectful Congress. Administration officials stress that he will present an upbeat picture of the nation's future.

Turning point

"It's the difference between harping and Bush-bashing all the time, and the president saying where we've been, where we are, and where we need to go, and how he's going to take us there," Mary Matalin, a senior Republican strategist, said.

"It's leadership versus this puny partisanship."

The speech will open with a review of the administration's efforts to protect the nation from attack, portraying the arrest of Saddam Hussein as both a justification for going to war and a potential turning point in the "war on terrorism".

There is likely to be little or no mention of the administration's claims concerning Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction which were the centrepiece of last year's state of the union speech, and which had to be partly withdrawn after they were found to be based on faulty intelligence.

A deal at the United Nations over the future of Iraq could allow President Bush to break news in his speech and offer the prospect of greater international involvement in running the transition to self-rule, a development that would be highly popular.

In polls published yesterday, the president still enjoyed the approval of a slim majority of Americans, and a strong majority for his handling on the war on terrorism. However, the boost he received from the capture of Saddam has largely worn off. In a Gallup poll, 53% approved of the president's overall performance, down 13 points from December.

He continues to receive mixed or negative reviews on the economy, despite recent signs of recovery. The Democratic presidential contenders have united in portraying President Bush as having undermined the nation's long-term economic future by taking the government from a $5 trillion (£2.8 trillion) surplus to a $5 trillion deficit, by giving large tax cuts for wealthy Americans while overseeing an increase of more than two million in the number of unemployed.

A Democratic activist group, MoveOn.org, yesterday broadcast a spoof version of the state of the union address, in which a Bush sound-alike claims that his reform of Medicare, the healthcare system for the elderly, "has real drug benefits - but not for you - for my contributors at the big drug companies".

Much of the policy substance in tonight's speech will be aimed at blunting the allegations of elitism with a series of piecemeal measures to address social problems. He will announce plans to reduce the costs of health insurance by granting new tax credits for medical expenses. Administration officials said he would also unveil a $120m scheme for job training, in an attempt to help the unemployed find work.

The president has already announced plans to offer legal status to some of the estimated 10 million undocumented foreign workers - another traditionally Democratic theme into which the White House hopes to make significant inroads to blur the traditional party distinctions.

In that regard, the president still has considerable work to do. A new study by the Pew Research Centre in Washington, showed that average voters saw themselves as closer ideologically to mainstream Democrats than to Mr Bush.

Contenders

Asked to place themselves on an ideological spectrum from one to six (with 1.0 representing the most conservative and 6.0 the most liberal), average respondents assessed themselves as 3.3. They put the president some distance to the right at 2.7, further away than General Wesley Clark, who was given a 3.6 score, and other centrist Democratic presidential contenders who scored 3.8.

Among the major candidates, only Howard Dean was seen as more ideologically distant from ordinary voters than the president. The public gave him a score of 4.2.

While the president attempts to shift towards the centre tonight, he must simultaneously offer something to his core supporters.

In the state of the union address, he will announce a plan for the partial privatisation of retirement funds, a longstanding conservative demand.