On Tuesday, the president will deliver his State of the Union message.
The conventional wisdom is that Barack Obama will continue his “move to the center.” The quotation marks are necessary because some people think he really is moving to the center, while others think he just wants to appear like he is.
Either way, this undoubtedly means Obama will try to seem as if he’s meeting Republicans halfway on their “reasonable” demands (quotation marks for the same reason as before) while drawing a stark line against their “unreasonable” ones. 
As much as I may enjoy it, this sort of strategizing leaves most Americans cold. As far as I can tell, these days they are less concerned with “triangulation” than they are with the creation of good jobs that aren’t bogus make-work, or paid for with money borrowed from China or our grandkids. 
If that’s the case, the solution is right in front of the president’s face. To echo a chant from the 2008 Republican convention, “Drill, baby, drill!”