After watching President Obama's state of the union, plus the first Republican response to it by Rep Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, and the second response by Rep Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota, chair of the Tea Party caucus in Congress, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that if nations survive and prosper by realistic assessment of their problems, America really is finished.

Obama surely instructed his speech writers to capitalise on his successful outing to the memorial in Tucson, where he gave a speech that essentially reprised the campaign rhetoric of 2008 that got him elected in the first place. The result in Congress last night was the quintessence of gasbaggery.

The keynote was unity, symbolised by Democrats and Republicans eschewing their normal factional seating pattern in favour of interspecies mixing. Rep Joe Wilson, famous for having shouted "You lie" at Obama during his health care speech to a joint session of Congress in 2009, now sat demurely next to two lady Democrats.

Supreme Court Justice Alito, who mouthed a reproof at Obama at his last state of the union, didn't even show. Neither did the other two most conservative Supremes, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas (the latter now in hot water for failing to reveal on his financial disclosure forms the nearly $690,OOO paid to his wife Ginni by a right-wing lobby shop, the Heritage Foundation between 2003-2007.)

The consequence was a markedly less spirited, partisan affair. Instead of bounding to their feet in raptures of applause or snarling in their chairs, the nation's legislators sat demure and glassy-eyed as Obama gave a pep rally on America's crisis.

It's not just that none of them had a plan. None of them had a map of America's recent history, to help them figure out where the ship of state has drifted, sails in tatters and parrots perched on the yard arm, squawking about America's singular greatness.

State of the union? Judging by this, America is finished