President Obama will invoke populist themes and attack Republican lawmakers as obstructionists on Tuesday in his most widely viewed remarks of the year, the State of the Union address.
In the last year of his first term, Obama will use his third address to a joint session of Congress as a launching pad for his re-election campaign. He will pitch himself as a champion of the middle class and claim that Republicans’ brand of “you’re-on-your-own” economics has concentrated the country’s wealth in the pockets of too few Americans, according to a preview of his remarks delivered in Osawatomie, Kan., last month.
The president will continue to call for the wealthy to pay more in taxes and pledge to wield his executive powers whenever necessary to bypass what he has dubbed a do-nothing Congress.
The administration’s preview of Obama’s remarks drew a quick rebuke from the top House Republican, Speaker John Boehner of Ohio.
“If that’s what the president is going to talk about Tuesday night, I think it’s pathetic,” Boehner said on “Fox News Sunday.”
The Republicans’ formal rebuttal to Obama’s remarks will be delivered by Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who decided against running for president this year. Daniels is expected to criticize Obama for fumbling the recovery and failing to follow through on the promises from his previous State of the Union addresses, such as comprehensive immigration reform.
In Obama’s defense, White House press secretary Jay Carney said State of the Union addresses are meant to be overly ambitious.
“If you got through a year and you achieved everything on your list, then you probably didn’t aim high enough,” Carney said.
Obama’s remarks will be a “blueprint for an American economy that’s built to last,” supporting new investments in manufacturing, energy development and worker training, the president said in a campaign video sent to supporters over the weekend. He called the upcoming election a pivotal moment for a nation at a crossroads.
“This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class and folks trying to work their way into the middle class,” Obama said. “Because we can go in two directions. One is toward less opportunity and less fairness. Or we can fight for where I think we need to go: building an economy that works for everyone, not just a wealthy few.”
Boehner’s office spoofed the address with a mock movie trailer previewing it as a horror film of sorts, which Republican lawmakers circulated via Twitter Monday.
The trailer advertises a movie called “1,000 days without a budget,” drawing attention to the Democratic-led Senate’s failure to pass a budget since April 2009.
The movie, mock credits said, comes from “the director of ‘Pass This Bill,’ and ‘We Can’t Wait’ and from “the producers of a failed ‘stimulus’ and 35 months of 8-percent-plus unemployment.”
On the morning after his address, Obama will embark on a three-day trip through four potential swing states that his campaign advisers see as vital to his re-election: Iowa, Arizona, Colorado and Michigan.
