State of the Union Address: President Obama to counter Republicans' negative attacks before Congress

The nation has its woes and when President Barack Obama steps before Congress on Tuesday night for his eighth and last State of the Union address, he will surely acknowledge them, from gun violence to rifts on immigration. But he will also say something else. As in: “Come on now, things aren’t that bad.”

What he will not do, the White House has signalled, is offer the usual wish list of actions Congress should take in the year ahead. With Republicans in control of both its houses, it would probably be an exercise in pointlessness. Mr Obama will instead attempt something more thematic, aides say, highlighting the progress he believes has been made under his watch, not least on jobs and the economy.

open image in gallery

Battling the lame-duck stigma that any President faces in the twilight of their time in office, Mr Obama will view the address with particular urgency. It will be the last time he gets a big stage on national television before the country turns its full attention to the campaign to replace him. It is about his legacy, which has sprung some leaks. And about helping whomever emerges as the 2016 Democrat nominee.

That means countering the narrative of the Republicans now vying to replace him, who are “seeming to run down America”, Denis McDonough, his chief of staff, lamented on NBC at the weekend. “I don’t really get it. What I see is an America that’s surging. We feel very optimistic about the future. That’s a big difference between us and what’s going on in this public debate right now.”

It will be partly personal. For weeks, those Republican voices, more shrill by the day, have been striving to cast Mr Obama as a venal and incompetent bumbler and America as a country in some kind of death spiral. A “feckless weakling”, Chris Christie, the New Jersey Governor, recently called him.

But never mind the ad hominem attacks. It’s the attack on his record that matters because if Hillary Clinton, as most still expect, is to emerge as his party’s flagbearer, she will be running partly on what he has achieved. Donald Trump’s catastrophe siren must be muffled. “The state of our union is a mess,” Mr Trump said on Sunday, for example. “We can’t beat Isis. Our military is falling back. It’s not being properly taken care of. Our vets aren’t being properly taken care of. Obamacare, as you know, is going to fail very soon and, probably in ’17, our healthcare. We don’t have borders. We don’t have anything.”

Democrats believe that, in rushing to the fringes, Republicans are putting themselves on the wrong side of history, common sense and decency. Mr Obama will surely refer to the divisive campaign language on immigration and – Mr Trump again – on the place of Muslims in society. He, and many of the Democrats who will listen, have invited Muslim Americans to attend as guests.

Among invitees of Michelle Obama will be Refaai Hamo, a Syrian scientist stricken with cancer who arrived at Detroit airport as a refugee in December with three daughters and a son. He fled Syria after his wife and another daughter were killed by a missile strike on their home. Mr Obama has pledged to take in 10,000 Syrian refugees this year. Most of the Republican candidates have vowed to oppose it.

On Syria, Mr Obama will try again to clarify his strategy on defeating Isis, an area of genuine anxiety for many Americans, exacerbated by December’s mass shooting in San Bernardino, which will also lead him to defend his recent executive action on gun control. More broadly, he will need to offer some reassurance on America’s role in Syria and in containing growing turmoil in the Middle East. “The whole Middle East is in terrible shape” under Mr Obama, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, told ABC News.

More poignant than any words Mr Obama may conjure on the plague of guns will be the one seat in the guest section that will remain empty tonight, to honour all those killed by bullets in America in the past year.