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President Clinton's State of the Union address covered a wide range of issues, from social security to child care. After the speech, the president's approval ratings got a needed boost in the wake of White House scandals. Elizabeth Farnsworth speaks with a panel of citizens in Denver to see how they rate President Clinton's performance.

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ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Thank you all for being with us again tonight. Linda Houston, given the extraordinary circumstances, all the allegations swirling around the President, what was your reaction to the State of the Union speech?

LINDA HOUSTON, Republican: Well, I think he's a very good actor. I think he did a very good job. I think he still takes a fair amount of credit for what I think is a very politically balanced success to what's going on with the state of the union right now. I think he was very composed. I was really very surprised that he was as composed as he was.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: James Sulton, did you have trouble concentrating on what he was saying? Did the allegations overwhelm the content of the speech for you?

JAMES SULTON, Democrat: I did not have trouble concentrating. The President did not appear wounded. If he had appeared wounded, defensive, then you would have been thinking about the allegations, rather than what he had to say. But, as Linda said, he was very composed. He delivered his speech well. As is his want, he was lengthy and he covered everything. So I don't think he missed any of the issues or topics that I wanted to hear about.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Linda Stahnke.

LINDA STAHNKE, Home Schooler: I think he started strong with an emotional appeal over the two congressmen who had died. And I think he seized control by doing that right off the bat. And then another point, midway, when he talked to families about their kids going to college, he used a real emotional appeal to seize people's attention again. And so I think he used some tactics to keep people on track with him and paying attention to the things he wanted them to pay attention to.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Were you able to pay attention, Mr. Coughlin?

DENNIS COUGHLIN, Republican: Yes, I was. I thought he did an excellent job. Obviously, he's been working on this speech for a considerable amount of time, and the allegations have just come out recently. So he did have time to prepare for this. But I thought he did a very, very effective job in delivering his message.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Did it surprise you that you weren't thinking about the allegations, or--

DENNIS COUGHLIN: No. I was not. I think this is a very serious matter that he talks about--the state of the union. It is obviously a historic event. It happens once a year. It's important. It's important to his presidency and as it is important to everybody's presidency.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Susan.

SUZANNA CORDOVA, Democrat: I thought it was really interesting. I think he sounded good. I thought he looked good. I thought a lot about how George Will had compared him to Woodrow Wilson and that he was crippled. He didn't appear to me like that at all. And I found it very easy to not have any of the scandal interfere with what I was listening to.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Do you get the feeling, Dee Cisneros, that he's paying attention to the public business, that he's able to do the things that he's supposed to do, even with all the scandal?

DEE CISNEROS, Democrat: I think he has a gift for communicating and connecting with people. He certainly connected with me, in spite of that star hanging over his head. He did. He made a connection when he talked about Social Security. He wants, he wants to make sure Social Security is there for everyone. I was so pleased that he plans to make sure that it's solvent after the year 2029. So he did connect with me.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Sam Arnold, how serious is the crisis confronting President Clinton right now, do you think? Has it been overplayed? Is it a really serious problem?

SAM ARNOLD, Republican: I think it's been overplayed. I think it's been a media baby. I think that as time passes, this thing will settle on out. I think he's a very good president, and I think he's delivered a splendid speech tonight.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And this is your view. You're a Republican, right?

SAM ARNOLD: I am a registered Republican. Yes.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: But this is your view of the scandal and of the speech?

SAM ARNOLD: Yes.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Do you--are you alone among your Republican friends in feeling this way?

SAM ARNOLD: No. No. There are a lot of people who think that this is a media hype and it's an attack from some of the hard right Republicans. They've been after his hide. They've been trying to tack his skin up on the shack for a long time. Between the Whitewater and this, when Starr goes from one to the next, why it's just--it's--I buy what Hillary said today, that it's an attempt to overthrow the President. They're trying to get back for what happened to Nixon.

DENNIS COUGHLIN: I disagree with Sam that that does not affect his presidency. I think that that is absolutely critical. I think if a guy's cheating on his wife, he's going to cheat on you. I don't think that that is any small item. Whether it is true or not true certainly remains to be--to be proven, Sam. I think that that is important. But without a moral compass, I would find it very difficult for him to be capable of running this country.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Eric Duran.

ERIC DURAN, Democrat: I disagree with that, because look--if you look through our history--and I think you would be hard pressed to point to any single president who you would agree with in terms of their moral integrity. If you look at George Washington, he was a slave owner. Does that mean that he's not a great president and he didn't do a good job? What does that say about his policies and his integrity and his courage?

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Linda.

LINDA STAHNKE: I disagree. I think there's much more to be seen in all of this and who's telling the truth and how deep this really goes. These sorts of allegations have haunted this President for a long time. This is not the first or only incident. And I think the American public deserves some real answers. And if he's broken the law, then that's very, very serious. But I think we have a capacity to set that aside for the moment and listen to his State of the Union speech and focus on other issues that affect the country. Tomorrow we'll look again at the allegations and all of those sorts of things being sorted out. And we'll be looking at that for some time.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What do you think about that, Chris?

CHRIS GOODWIN, Independent: I think they are just allegations, and it really remains to be seen how serious they are, because we really don't know what the evidence is firsthand. And as far as I'm concerned, Bill Clinton's personal life has always been secondary to me. The real issues have always been primary for me. And I've had enough disagreements with him on issues that relate to the economy and foreign policy and foreign trade that overrides all these personal things.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Did he speak to the issues that you care about the most, Mr. Dickinson?

T. WRIGHT DICKINSON, Republican: He touched on some of them. Unfortunately, I think that in that venue they all--any president tries to give something to everyone. And unfortunately, I don't think that's right. I think that they should kind of hone in what--this issue of what to do with the surplus, I was struck when he said that maybe we'd have a balanced budget in ‘99. It ain't zero yet, and already he's planning on--they're trying to plan on how to spend it. It's just in our psyche. Americans, just as soon as we got a buck, we spent it. I don't think that's right.

ERIC DURAN: That's not what I heard?

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What did you hear?

ERIC DURAN: I heard it dramatically different. I heard that we shouldn't begin spending any of that surplus, and if we do, it should go to Medicaid and Social Security first, so that way that there isn't any type of insolvency.

SAM ARNOLD: With all due respect, how can you talk about all these other programs that he went down and he just--there was program after program, after program--without talking about additional spending, additional money? I mean, that--

DEE CISNEROS: He said specifically that any program that is set up is without raising any more taxes.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Linda Stahnke.

LINDA STAHNKE: I was afraid that the first thing I would hear were lots of new programs. I heard that later, but I think Social Security needs to be taken care of. I don't agree we should expand into any other programs until we pay off the national debt and get our house in order. I always remember that business cycles come and go. And we're in an up economy. We will be eventually faced with a down economy. And we need to prepare for those times, as well as celebrate the good times. And growing new programs right now is--it's too soon. It's too soon for that. We need to take care of business with Social Security, with Medicare. I know in this state there are great concerns about the growth of Medicare and how we're going to pay for it because it's not all federally funded. It's partially state funded. And so all of these kinds of things need to be seen to before we do anything new.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Linda Houston, do you agree with that, and what about expanding Medicare to cover younger people, slightly younger people?

LINDA HOUSTON: Well, I'm not sure I totally agree with the Medicare support. I really feel strongly about the education and the child care side, almost more. I have elderly parents, and they say to me all the time, you know, we didn't--we've lived frugally all of our lives, but we have enough, and we don't need anybody to take care of us. And I realize there are certainly some people who maybe, who are not in the same place, but I think on the most part our elderly are pretty well taken care of. I think the children are a real need, and I think with the reform, the welfare reform, we're going to have children slip through the cracks. And I think that it's not just education and especially young education, but it's education of those mothers of those babies. It needs to be a whole program of teaching them how to take care of children. And that would be my first concern with the spending of any extra money.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Chris Goodwin, did you hear what you wanted to hear?

CHRIS GOODWIN: Not really. He always paints a real rosy picture on the economy. And he doesn't really address what I think are some really fundamental problems. The gap between the rich and the rest of us is as wide as it's ever been. People are still working harder, longer hours to make ends meet. He didn't really address that problem. He talked about all the new jobs that have been created. But the fact is too many of those jobs are low-wage jobs, non-union jobs in the service sector, or they're part-time jobs. So many people used to have full-time jobs that are now scraping by on part-time. So he--in my mind he didn't address that.

DENNIS COUGHLIN: I compliment President Clinton on the economy. Employment is at an all time high. Inflation is at an all time low. Interest rates are such that more and more people are able to afford housing. Certainly in Colorado we are having a difficult time hiring people. I think that the economy is in very good shape, Chris. I disagree with you on that.

JAMES SULTON: Cut to the chase. If the President fell down at all, it was where all Presidents fall down at the State Union, it's on how. And they--I really do think he talked about all of the issues that are important to most of us, as do all presidents on this occasion, and you leave things up in the air. You can't talk about anything as complicated as the American economy, and then do anything, other than simplify.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, I'm afraid that's all the time we have for tonight. Thank you very much.

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