No one was surprised that the Court Jesters in Congress and the partisan gallery applauded when President Gloria Arroyo talked tough in her SONA.

After all, that assured them that "happy days are here again" or up to 2010. The Pork and Perks, attendant to being cheering squad of PGMA will be flooding galore.

The Spin Masters Inc. saved the best for last when she quoted: "From where I sit, I can tell you a President can be as strong as she wants." But this one may have worked with the rah-rah boys but not with the Discerning Ones.

The Image Makers - true - have checked GMA's grating voice, public display of temper and sartorial disasters. But this one - far from boosting her stock as a tough-as-she-can-get Mama, didn't register in the Reichter Scale. No one grew pale.

This was because the insecurity slip was showing - much like Freudian. GMA is aware of her unpopularity - the worse sitting president since Marcos - less approved and less loved. No matter what the Palace Queen says, no one wants to be disliked.

Truly, GMA is also increasingly aware that even as Commander in Chief, she could not pull ranks to put the so-called (her term) "rogue soldiers" (behind the extra-judicial slays) to toe the chain of command. If killing civilians for democratic dissent is against official public policy, apparently some "rogue soldiers" (sic) are not listening to their Commander in Chief.

So she pleads her case before with the European Union and asked their expert assistance on the 800 or so killings. And she is thankful the Supreme Court assembled a Summit on the killings last week, something she should have done herself.

She didn't - she couldn't? Why?

Also, the legitimacy issue haunts her - remember "I am Sorry" and Garci? Not once but twice, she stole the presidency - the widow of the later presidential bet Fernando Poe Jr. (Susan Roces) lamented. GMA's problem is that half of this nation believes - that either she deposed Erap illegally in 2001 or cheated FPJ of the presidency in 2004 - or both.

GMA is wary that her pet bill named HSA (Human Securities Act) - revised a hundred times in Congress - out to stroke the beard of Papa Bush on the anti-terror initiatives, is facing a lot of legal and noisy opposition from various sectors. It can be a source of insecurity indeed - if an anti-terror bill, often made "toast of the town" legislation elsewhere - is battered to pieces by its own citizens.

But the reason for the antipathy is the record in GMA's wake which has been littered with abuses against human rights that giving the HSA (Human Securities Acts) to the authorities would be like the moral equivalent of giving a live grenade to a kindergarten kid.

We mention this with a tinge of pity since in her heart of hearts, GMA truly loves to contribute her little share to the global war against terrorism. Papa Bush loves her for that - perhaps only for that.

But not even in her Memoirs would GMA even admit that she is deathly afraid of a fate that befell her immediate predecessor Erap - jailed for crimes and cut off from society.

This is gleamed from the fact that even the title of her SONA was labeled by the Manila Bulletin as " I Stand in the Way of No One's Ambition," which if the paper is accurate, is central to the State of the President's Mind during the speech-making process.

President GMA wants to put flesh to her exit plan in 2010 by hinting of a "successor" enjoying the harvest of the seeds she had purportedly planted. However, the tough-talking begins when she warned of "caped crusaders" who would try to sabotage her last three years of legacy-making.

And to warn those who plan to do "grave digging" on GMA's sins of omission and commission after 2010 - she dropped a joke that fell like a bombshell. She hinted that she could run for Congress in her Pampanga district- presidential or parliamentary - that would potentially make her a Speaker or Prime Minister respectively.

Some psychologists believed the President was only trying to psyche herself and her rabid fans with that final statement of "being strong if she wants to" because contemporary events showed that the Supreme Court had spanked her for her presidential excesses in executing anti-constitutional edicts in dealing with dissent and opposition in this country.

GMA knows in her own confessional box that her urge to be a "strong" president ends where the rules of the Constitution begins. The Rule of Law would limit her predisposition to an iron hand - unless she plans to be a closet Dictator - pretending to be a democratic leader but wielding dictatorial means.

But the greatest "stain of our democracy" that she gravely wants erased from her mantel of nine-year rule is the murders of judges, radical civilians and media persons that will never sit well with any author of a Philippine history book in this nation which prides itself to be the most "vibrant democracy" in Asia. And its press being the most free.

Slyly, the Commander in Chief, had passed the buck of arresting this deluge of undemocratic slayings to Congress by asking them to pass the relevant laws for their immediate arrest. But GMA has herself to blame. For exactly one SONA ago, she had praised to the 7th Heaven the likes of General Palparan, long acknowledged as "The Butcher of Central Luzon," even in the midst of reports of human right violations.

Did she unwittingly create a Frankenstein then that had grown to monster proportion which she can no longer control? A freakish genie which can break the chain of command and execute people in gay abandon?

That would make even the most psyched president so insecure.

Tough -talking president, yes; but her slip is certainly showing.