Jose manuel barroso, president of the European Commission, appears to be taking Bill Clinton as a role model. Like Mr Clinton, he began his term with a pointless and damaging row about homosexuality: although in his case, it was about alleged gay-bashing by a prospective European commissioner, not about gays in the military. Now Mr Barroso is trying to boil his programme down to something like the famous Clintonian slogan: "it's the economy, stupid." Such candour is not allowed in official documents, however, so the programme that Mr Barroso presented on February 2nd was soporifically entitled "A partnership for growth and jobs". But its central message was clear. The European Union's biggest problem is slow growth, and the Barroso commission wants to do something about it.
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