Ezra Klein notes there’s a lot of evidence that presidential persuasion isn’t effective when applied to the public. In fact, it’s often counterproductive during times of divided government when a stirring presidential speech on a particular bill can make it harder, rather than easier, for the opposition party to support it.

The implications are fairly radical: The power of the presidential bully pulpit is wildly overrated in the Beltway, and overrated in a way that actually makes it harder for voters to hold legislators accountable and for politicians to get anything done.

The White House posts a photo that when enlarged shows the edits President Obama made to his State of the Union address earlier this year.

Jake Tapper reports the memo White House economic adviser Larry Summers didn’t want President Obama to see was almost certainly leaked to journalist Noam Scheiber by former budget director Peter Orszag.

By making the original memo available to readers on the web, Scheiber also allowed people to see the document properties which indicate the document last resided on Orszag’s computer.

“The expectations for him were absurd. And they were wrong. They expected him to be something he couldn’t possibly be given his level of experience. It was impossible to ask him to be all the things that people poured into him.”

— Former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), in an interview with GQ, on whether President Obama has lived up to his promise.

Gallup finds that the historically high gap between partisans’ job approval ratings of President Obama continued during his third year in office, with an average of 80% of Democrats and 12% of Republicans approving of the job he was doing.

In fact, that 68 point partisan gap is tied for the fourth highest dating back to the Eisenhower administration. Only George W. Bush’s fourth, fifth, and sixth years in office showed higher degrees of political polarization.

The Washingtonian reports that the ultimate victor of the presidential election, no matter who he is, “may not get to claim the ultimate prize: the Oval Office.”

Beginning sometime next year the President may be relocated from the White House West Wing and the iconic Oval Office to temporary office space next door while his office undergoes needed repairs and restoration.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told Bloomberg TV that President Obama is “not going to ask me to stay on, I’m pretty confident. I’m confident he’ll be president. But I’m also confident he’s going to have the privilege of having another secretary of the Treasury.”

A new CBS News poll finds that 91% of Americans who watched President Obama’s State of the Union address approved of the policy proposals he put forth, while just 9% disapproved.

Caveat: “Americans who watched the speech were generally more Democratic than the nation as a whole. Forty-four percent of viewers polled were Democrats and 25% were Republicans. (Historically speaking, that is not an unusual statistic: a president’s supporters are more likely than his opponents to watch State of the Union addresses.)”

This is fantastic: The New York Times has a video of President Obama’s State of the Union address alongside a rolling transcript and inline fact checks.

A new RNC video confirms that much of what you heard much in President Obama’s State of the Union speech last night was recycled from previous addresses.

BuzzFeed: “Not sure it’s exactly an attack, but it’s a pretty compelling video.”

[Read more…]

A Smart Politics study of the 70 orally delivered State of the Union Addresses since 1934 finds the text of President Obama’s 2012 speech to have tallied the third lowest score on the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, at an 8.4 grade level.

Twitter
has put together an interesting graphic from last night’s State of the
Union Address, showing the tweets per minute during the speech and how
members of Congress reacted.

Behind the numbers: While Republican members of Congress are generally seen as more prolific
users of Twitter than their Democratic counterparts, last night’s
congressional tweets were overwhelmingly by Democrats, with 60%, while
Republicans made up the remaining 40%.

Here’s the complete text of President Obama’s State of the Union address as released by the White House:

Last month, I went to Andrews Air Force Base and welcomed home some of our last troops to serve in Iraq. Together, we offered a final, proud salute to the colors under which more than a million of our fellow citizens fought – and several thousand gave their lives.

We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world. For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq. For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country. Most of al Qaeda’s top lieutenants have been defeated. The Taliban’s momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home.

These achievements are a testament to the courage, selflessness, and teamwork of America’s Armed Forces. At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together.

[Read more…]

President Obama will warn the nation tonight that “the decades-old promise of a secure and rising middle class is threatened by economic unfairness as he delivers an election-year State of the Union message that is likely to resonate in the months ahead on the campaign trail,” the Washington Post reports.

“Obama will outline the steps he believes are necessary to reform a fragile American economy now showing signs of slow recovery after the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.”

According to excerpts, he will say: “The defining issue of our time is how to keep that promise alive. No challenge is more urgent. No debate is more important… We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules. What’s at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values, but American values. We have to reclaim them.”

Ryan Lizza notes that although many hoped Barack Obama would be someone “who reshapes public opinion and the political landscape with his charisma and his powers of persuasion.”

“Instead, Obama has turned out to be… ‘a facilitator of change.’ The facilitator is acutely aware of the constraints of public opinion and Congress. He is not foolish enough to believe that one man, even one invested with the powers of the Presidency, can alter the fundamentals of politics… Directors are more like revolutionaries. Facilitators are more like tacticians. Directors change the system. Facilitators work the system. Obama’s first three years as President are the story of his realization of the limits of his office, his frustration with those constraints, and, ultimately, his education in how to successfully operate within them. A close look at the choices Obama made on domestic policy, based on a review of hundreds of pages of internal White House documents, reveals someone who is canny and tough–but who is not the President his most idealistic supporters thought they had elected.”

President Obama will use his State of the Union address on Tuesday “to define an activist role for government in promoting a prosperous and equitable society, hoping to draw a stark contrast between the parties in a time of deep economic uncertainty,” the New York Times reports.

Obama will promise a populist “blueprint for an American economy that’s built to last,” with the government assisting to ensure “an America where everybody gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share and everybody plays by the same set of rules.”

With three days remaining until the speech, the Washington Post reports Obama said he has yet to finish writing his address, “so there might be a few late nights between now and then.”

The Hill
reports that Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) will give the official
Republican response to President Obama’s upcoming State of the Union
address, and Herman Cain will deliver the Tea Party Express response.

The
choices for speakers demonstrates the continued divide between the
Republican establishment, which chose a relatively moderate governor
with ties to the George W. Bush administration, and the Tea Party
movement, which selected a businessman who has never held elected office
and ran for president as an outsider.

Vice President Joe Biden had his “oops” moment yesterday in San Francisco when he told a crowd that “the Giants are on their way to the Super Bowl,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

That didn’t please a crowd filled with San Francisco 49ers fans looking forward to a playoff game this weekend against the New York Giants.

“Biden quickly recognized the gaffe and and explained he was accustomed to thinking in terms of the San Francisco Giants and their baseball wins. His next reference was to the ’49ers on their way’ to the Big Game.”