Surely he was not being modest. In fact, no president has been so visible, so loquacious, and so self-promotional as he: his television appearances simply come too often and run for too long to justify what he says, which is usually nothing important or useful or new or comprehensible. But it’s precisely on those occasions that he makes his claims to achievement, not in his State of the Nation Address — his State of the Nation Address is the occasion he seizes to ambush and lambaste targets in their helpless presence in his audience — political foes, disfavored diplomats, and other objects of some raging fixation.