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.

What is implied but left unsaid is that China has become the new yardstick, comparison with which is the new criterion for measuring US success.

Wisely avoiding a blame game, Obama instead struggles to bolster a sense of American exceptionalism, invoking everything from the universality of US ideals to the implicit support of the Almighty in heaven above.

He cites things that supposedly set the US apart as a nation: "We do big things We're a nation that says 'I might not have a lot of money, but I have this great idea for a new company ... I might not come from a family of college graduates, but I will be the first to get my degree'..."

All of the above may be true, but can the same not be said for China and other countries?

Then he sounds a bit like former US president George W. Bush, recycling the swagger when he proclaims: "We have taken the fight to Al-Qaida" and "we will defeat you."

The mild-mannered Democrat can be triumphalist, too. "Tonight we can say American leadership has been renewed and America's standing has been restored."

But Obama generally has a gentler way with words than his predecessor. Consider this Orwellian euphemism for the bloody and inaccurate drone attacks on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border: "Their leaders and operatives are being removed from the battlefield."

At one point Obama complains that cutbacks make the US a plane without an engine, flying high because of the lightened load, but sure to soon "feel the impact". Is that a kamikaze joke? How about a "plane of state" that is not weighed down by heavy bombs on its wingtips? Wouldn't that be a more sensible way to soar to new heights?

A most inappropriate comparison is invoked when Obama - under whose negligent stewardship the American space program has scuttled plans for moon and Mars projects - declares that this is a "Sputnik moment".

It's more like a Sputnik yawn. A decade from now, if there are any men in space at all, it will be because China rose to pick up the challenge where the US left off.

A space race is not without political drama, but how much better it would be for all of us if the urge for competitive aggression, invasion and application of military know-how were played out exploring the moon and other uninhabited worlds, rather than pummeling the delicate, crowded planet Earth.

Obama closes with the usual religious pieties. But why, pray tell, should God bless America?

If there is a God, it is jarring to think that the Almighty would take so prejudiced an interest in political boundaries as to bless one nation at the expense of others.

Remember those balloons? Soon after the exhilaration of release, they drift out of sight, and then lose air and altitude. They shrink, shrivel, pucker up and then drop from the sky, one by one, with nothing but tattered bits of rubber to show for their once lofty promise.

The author is a visiting fellow in the East Asia Program, Cornell University, New York.