Clinton in a state over his message

President Bill Clinton was working yesterday on the vital State of the Union message he will deliver tomorrow night, in which he must reassert his authority over his Democratic party, and recapture at least part of the initiative from his Republic an foes who control Congress.

No single speech can transform Mr Clinton's battered fortunes - least of all one whose specific new proposals are unlikely to extend beyond an increase in the minimum wage and a clampdown on illegal immigration. But at the midpoint of his term the President desperately needs to show he is still a force to be reckoned with.

Since the electoral disaster last November, Mr Clinton has been virtually invisible, spending most of his time - to judge from news reports - closeted with sociologists, motivators and sundry other gurus, while the White House has turned into a virtual political backwater.

Washington, which normally revolves around the President, has instead been mesmerised by the Republican takeover on Capitol Hill in general, and by the fireworks of the House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, in particular. If Mr Clinton is to have a hope of re-election in 1996, that focus must change.

This weekend he set about rallying his Democratic troops, many of whom would gladly be rid of him. "Reports of our demise are premature," Mr Clinton declared to party leaders at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee which installed the combativeConnecticut Senator Christopher Dodd as its new chairman.

Briefly, his efforts worked. Setting aside their bickering liberals and moderates took aim at Mr Gingrich and their common Republican enemies, greeting Mr Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore with chants of "six more years".

Seizing back the broader initiative will be far harder. In tomorrow's address, Mr Clinton has to walk a very fine line, between offering compromise to Republicans where he shares their goals - from welfare reform to tax cuts, smaller government, and the line item veto giving him greater control of legislation - and making it clear that Democrats have not become Republican clones.

Too much of the former, and the party's bedrock liberal wing will be outraged; too much of the latter, and he will stir up further discontent among the "New Democrats" whence Mr Clinton sprang, but who claim an excess of pandering to liberals and their causes brought about the mid-term rout.

All this is complicated by his poor standing. "Mr Clinton is the weakest president since Nixon and perhaps since Herbert Hoover," wrote the Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot, overtly pro-Republican but with whose judgment even Clinton sympathiserswould find it hard to quarrel.

The most vivid evidence of that weakness is the Congressional rebellion over the proposed $40bn (£26bn) of loan guarantees for Mexico, channelled through an unlikely coalition of hardnosed "America First" Republicans, and surly Democrats who refuse to help their President, even in the foreign policy domain, where the White House traditionally has its way. Some Republicans also link their backing for the Mexico plan to an end to Democratic obstruction of their party's domestic programme.

Polls convey the same message. Mr Clinton's approval rating is stuck around 40 per cent and he is consistently the loser in theoretical White House match-ups with Bob Dole, the Senate majority leader and Republican frontrunner. A survey last week showed that more than half the electorate would not to vote for him in 1996. Another suggests 42 per cent - including 25 per cent of registered Democrats - think Mr Clinton should not even run.