Bloomberg View: The State of the Union Is ... Eh; Singapore's Pay-for-Performance Plan

Osama bin Laden shouldn’t be the only man capable of getting Democrats and Republicans to work together. In so many words, that was the message of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.

Obama’s 65-minute speech began and ended with references to the U.S. military’s killing of bin Laden. In between was a grab bag of programs and proposals that would require Congress and the President to “work together”—a phrase or variation thereof that Obama used five times. At least he didn’t pretend this was likely, acknowledging that most Americans believe “nothing will get done in Washington this year, or next year, or maybe even the year after that, because Washington is broken.”