Preview of SOTU Address

In just two minutes and twenty seconds, the president gives us a preview of his third State of the Union address. Obama says that his address will “be a bookend to what I said in Kansas last month about the central mission we have as a country, and my central focus as president.” 

That speech in Osawatomie was as full-throated an endorsement of working-class America as we’ve seen from him; and if he uses this year’s SOTU to accept the role as leader in what the GOP calls “class warfare,” the dynamics of this election year could experience a pretty big shift. How should my governor, Mitch Daniels, use Right to Work as a counter to the president’s call for workers’ rights? How would Mitt Romney—less a sure thing now than just a week ago—massage his wealthbot predator history into the record of a blue-collar ally? How might Newt Gingrich’s gig as a “historian” for hire be explained?

The president will lay out a plan for an America where “everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.” Leaving Speaker “Not as I do” Gingrich aside, Romney’s ball-park 15 percent tax rate plays right into that argument.

We’ve just started seeing commercials from the Obama reelection campaign, and it looks like the president’s third SOTU will also serve as his official campaign speech. Good. This is the time for Obama to list his achievements and his failures; his victories over Congress and the GOP’s earth-salting tactics. And if he uses his record to make his case—something Andrew Sullivan has rightly wondered aloud about—the State of the Union might change the game for the remaining GOP candidates.