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Jamie Dupree's Washington Insider

Posted: 9:15 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 23, 2011

A Big Week 

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By Jamie Dupree

President Obama gets the chance to re-set the political landscape tomorrow night with his State of the Union Address.  Will it be memorable?  Or just another speech?

What should we expect?  The White House says a main focus will be jobs and the economy, which is something Democrats in the Congress are more than ready to emphasize as well.

"In part because of the economic plan that my recovery board helped shape, the economy is now growing again," Mr. Obama said during a speech in Schenectady, New York on Friday, which the White House said could be seen as a preview of tomorrow night's remarks.  

"Over the last year, businesses have added more than a million jobs.  The pace of hiring and growth is picking up, and that's encouraging news," the President added.  

"But at the same time, while businesses are adding jobs, millions of people are still out there looking for work."

And there's the rub, right now.  The economy is growing at a moderate pace, but not close enough to erase the job losses of the last several years.

There has been talk that the White House will include in Tuesday's speech a call for new spending on roads and bridges; but the idea of a $50 billion infrastructure plan late last year dropped like a lead balloon in the Congress, as even Democrats ran away from the idea before and after the elections.

This week's speech is a reminder about an important rule of American politics - the guy in the White House has a pretty powerful voice.  

Along with a focus on the economy, expect a main theme to be a redux of his 2008 campaign pledge of bipartisanship, as there will be lots of pictures of lawmakers from each party pairing off with their State Dates on the House floor.

Now, as for the State of the Union Address, I really would dare you to come up with a quote that you remember from one of these speeches.

I'd almost dare your to remember one Obama quote from last year's speech.

You may remember Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) yelling "You lie!" - but that wasn't during a State of the Union.

You may remember Mr. Obama last year calling out the Supreme Court over its ruling in the Citizens United case, but I remember that more for Justice Samuel Alito mouthing "No" rather than for what the President said.

I remember Ronald Reagan dropping the huge Omnibus budget bill on the clerk's desk in the 1980's and vowing to veto another bill like that from the Congress, but I can't tell you the quote.

I remember Bill Clinton going on and on and on. getting bad media reviews, and then watching his poll numbers go up.

Still, even though it's hard to put your finger on a speech like this, it can set the tone for the year, especially now that we have a new dynamic in Washington, D.C., with divided power in the Congress.

The Bully Pulpit can never be underestimated.  We'll see how well it's used this week.

 
 

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