Mr. Luce does his best to appeal to the Republican readers of The Financial Times by producing as boring and cliche ridden a commentary on the State of the Union address, as the speech by the president. See this rhetorical clinker as indicative:
‘The state of the union is improving and Mr Obama’s Kumbaya days are over.’
I read the print version of the State of the Union posted by CNN, as I’ve grown weary of the ennui inducing live version. From the sub-headline of the Luce essay that includes the descriptor ‘strutting’ to the concluding notion of ‘another Clinton presidency’: this column reflects shopworn Washington insider cynicism seamlessly blended with self-evident Neo-Liberal mendacity. Clinton, who proved his own Neo-Liberal credentials by ending Glass-Steagall, the harbinger of the 2008 economic collapse, and Federal Welfare:
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2012/08/27/repeal-of-glass-steagall-caused-the-financial-crisis:

In fact, the financial crisis might not have happened at all but for the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall law that separated commercial and investment banking for seven decades. If there is any hope of avoiding another meltdown, it’s critical to understand why Glass-Steagall repeal helped to cause the crisis. Without a return to something like Glass-Steagall, another greater catastrophe is just a matter of time.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/welfare/stories/wf082396.htm

Today, we are ending welfare as we know it,” Clinton said at a White House ceremony, where he was flanked by three former welfare recipients. “But I hope this day will be remembered not for what it ended, but for what it began.

The president’s speech was the usual fourth of July oration, highlighted by his politically incremental proposals, that fell flat with the Republicans No-Nothings and Mr. Luce: in sum an utterly predictable confluence of event and subsequent commentary in the respectable bourgeois press, in it’s Conservative iteration. To quote the Neo-Liberal wisdom of Ronald Reagan: Government is the problem!

Political Skeptic