Obama’s State of the Union: let the battle commence

It is not a time for soaring rhetoric. The State of the Union has become a wish list, a name check of issues and priorities, and policies a president hopes to achieve: something, if you like, for everyone.

It is a glory moment for the bully pulpit, when the president can attract a prime-time audience of tens of millions of people who consider it almost an act of civic duty to tune in.

Members of congress, too, must at least look interested: even his thorniest political enemies have sometimes to break into applause. And speechwriters will have been pestered for weeks by government departments and interest groups and lobbyists desperate for their issue to make it into the text.

“These are speeches that the president takes very seriously,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney last week. “He’s a writer himself, so he he engages at a very deep level on the framing of his speech, on the writing of it and the editing of it and the shaping of it.”

It is already clear what Obama will set out to say. With yet another looming deadline in the ongoing car crash that is the debt crisis, when the sweeping spending cuts and tax hikes known as the sequester threaten to kick in on 1 March, a top priority will be the economy.

Priorities to push

And if there were to be any overtures to bipartisanship in tonight’s address, it won’t be here. Obama told house Democrats he was seeking rapprochement: “I am prepared, eager and anxious to get a big deal, a big package that ends government by crisis.”

But with no signs of any kind of deal, imminent or otherwise, the president is likely to use this opportunity to lay the blame firmly at the feet of the GOP. It is shaping up to be a re-run of the highly partisan fight over austerity cuts versus spending and how best to get the economic recovery back on track.

And Obama’s new, more aggressively liberal line will echo the inaugural address: everyone needs a fair shot, everyone must pay their fair share. And, of course, painting the Republicans as the party which wants to offer tax breaks to millionaires and slash resources for Medicare and job creation.

The battle lines are also set for another major priority: gun control. Democrats have invited a number of gun crime victims to watch the State of the Union from the vistor’s gallery as part of their drive to ramp up the pressure on congress to take action.

Around two dozen people whose lives have been touched by gun violence will be there, including a young girl from Newtown Connecticut who wrote to Nancy Pelosi to tell her about the petition she had launched calling for tougher controls.

But although there does look like there could be a deal on stricter background checks for anyone buying a gun, President Obama is unlikely to achieve the sweeping changes he is championing.

Many Republicans remain staunchly opposed to any ban on assault weapons or high-capacity magazines: the numbers for a majority in the house simply do not stack up.

Room for compromise

Where there are signs of movement, though, is immigration, the year’s other big issue. The president wants a clear path to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants, insisting it will help boost middle-class incomes rather than undermine them.

A bipartisan senate group has already come up with proposals to for the biggest change in immigration policy for decades, but top Republicans want to tie that path to citizenship to more stringent border controls.

It is clear, though, that the Republicans have realised they need to make up much ground with Hispanic voters. tellingly, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, will be delivering the Republican response to the State of the Union in English and Spanish.

“His family’s story is a testament to the promise and greatness of America,” House speaker John Boener said in his endorsement, although Rubio’s will not be the only Republican offering. Senator Rand Paul will serve up what he called an “extra response”, on behalf of the Tea Party. Another occasion when the party’s internal divisions will be played out in public.

Beyond the traditional laundry list, though, this year’s State of the union will offer another glimpse of the reinvigorated second term Obama: determined, say pundits, to use this brief window of opportunity to push home his agenda, the way his supporters have been yearning for since 2009.

A man with a plan

According to the New York Times, it is not simply about an unrepentantly liberal rhetoric, but a more fundamental change in a president freed from the constraints of re-election. Sources from both parties described him as more confident, relaxed, self-assured.

The former Clinton aide, Don Baer, told the paper: “Obama is feeling his oats… I think he probably believes he was cautious and hemmed in by one thing or another in the first term, and he’s decided he’s going to do more of what he really wants and be who he really is in the second term.”

So expect no flights of soaring rhetoric or surprises, but do watch for signs of a bolder, more determined Obama showcasing his vision to a national audience, at a time when despite more evidence of economic gloom, he remains far more popular than the squabbling congress.

Assertive leadership: that is what Democrats, and many voters, have been calling for. No more attemtps to compromise with a party which you can depict as uninterested in doing deals, then. Instead, a president who feels he has a mandate for change, and just a few months of that precious second term to achieve it.

Felicity Spector writes about US politics for Channel 4 News