AUSTIN — As a re-election campaign speech, President Clinton's State of the Union was a pip, but it didn't tell us much about the state of the union.

I liked increasing the minimum wage, keeping lobbyists from writing the environmental and safety laws, campaign finance reform and the education ideas, but the rest of it was pretty much campaign blah-blah-blah. Except for the minimum wage, nothing addressed the economic winter of our discontent.

Not that Clinton was wrong about this weird economy (it is growing — more jobs, better trade, happy campers on Wall Street and all that), but this is more than just an argument about whether our glass is half-empty or half-full. The maldistribution of the rewards of the long economic recovery is what is so troubling. The economy is doing better, but most people aren't. The middle class is shrinking. Productivity increases, but wages don't. Profits are at an all-time high, but the corporations keep firing people. The Haves and the Have Nots are now separated by a gulf worthy of pre-revolutionary France. We seem to be developing into a corporate oligarchy. It's eerie, almost creepy, because none of the politicians wants to talk about this.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, speaking for the Republicans, naturally offered the old pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps philosophy, which is so helpful to the bootless. Dole paints Clinton as one who defends the old "elites." Medicaid never struck me as a program for the elite, but I figure that Dole should know from elites, since a look at his record shows he spends more time with them than the regulars at Waco's Elite Cafe.

His main booster is the Ernest & Julio Gallo Winery, for which Dole passed a special tax break in 1986 that would save the heirs of the two founding brothers $104 million in inheritance taxes after Ernest and Julio's passing.

Dole is also a backer of one of the largest agricultural subsidy programs, the Market Promotion Program, and it ain't about Kansas wheat. The Gallo winery benefited from this egregious example of corporate welfare to the tune of $23.8 million between 1986 and 1994. The nifty new book "The Buying of the President," put out by the Center for Public Integrity, details Dole's maneuvering to keep the MPP intact. Gallo has contributed $381,000 to Dole's campaigns. ("The Buying of the President" is just as good on the other candidates, including Clinton.)

Dole's connection with Archer-Daniels-Midland is better-known and involves just as much quid for the pro quo. The old "supermarket to the world" has been investigated for everything from price-fixing to paying its executives in Swiss accounts. Head honcho Dwayne Andreas is a major political player; those of you with long memories will recall the $25,000 check he gave to Richard Nixon's CREEP, which figured in Watergate. Dole is not only a frequent flyer on ADM's corporate jet but a major advocate of ADM's infamous ethanol subsidy, a bit of corporate welfare worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Without the subsidy, there would be no ethanol market, and ADM controls 60 percent of it. According to Common Cause, ADM and the Andreas family have given $453,000 to Dole's various purses.

In addition, Dole supports the Export Enhancement Program, which is such a rank piece of corporate welfare that even the conservative Heritage Foundation is against it. According to the Center for Public Integrity, ADM received more than $134 million from the program between 1985 and 1995.

Another major Dole backer is Koch Industries ($245,000), now the country's second-largest family-owned industry, and the Koch brothers are among the wealthiest men in the world (estimated worth: $4.7 billion). Among other right-wing groups, the Koches support the libertarian Cato Institute and Citizens for a Sound Economy, which should be called Rich Guys for Big Bidness. CSE wants to phase out Medicare completely, and Dole's regulatory reform bill — the one that would effectively repeal most of our health, safety and environmental regulations — is straight out of the CSE playbook.

Lots of corporate money is funneled to Dole through his Better America Foundation and the Dole Foundation and through "soft money" to the Republican Party. For example, ADM has given $1,572,268 in soft money to the Republican Party and $100,000 to the BAF. ADM is almost an equal-opportunity giver, having contributed $814,000 in soft money to the Democrats.

ADM is on the public teat not only through the ethanol subsidy and the Export Enhancement Program but also through the peanut subsidy and the sugar subsidy, which benefits their corn sweetener market.

Well, there are all kinds of "elites" in this country, and I'm a little unclear on which ones Dole thinks Clinton is trying to help. Poor children? Downsized workers? Young people willing to join AmeriCorps to get a college education? If Dole thinks the people he's helping — and who are, of course, helping him — are not elites, maybe we should send him a dictionary.

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.