An Unusually Unimportant State of the Union Address

Last year I suggested that the State of the Union speech was an unexpectedly important moment for Barack Obama. Except in as much as it was needed to steady Democratic nerves frayed by Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts, I don’t think this was true. In part that’s because I can’t remember anything about it and had to remind myself what I thought of it at the time.

So let’s try something different this* year: this is an unusually unimportant State of the Union address. As Ezra Klein notes, these things rarely make much of a difference (they rarely confirm or reverse any prevailing media “narrative”) and, in any case, the White House seems to have prepared the ground quite effectively this year. Plus, the PResident’s poll numbers are reasonably healthy and there’s some reason anyway to hope that better economic times lie ahead.