SOTU annotation coming tomorrow

Over the past decade, I've produced an "Annotated Version" of most State of the Union speeches soon after they were delivered. The 2008 version and links to a number of others here. Because of Atlantic speech-related events this evening, I won't do one tonight but will in this space by tomorrow morning. Just for the record.

Obama's big speech this evening is like several other of his high-stakes appearances in apparently needing to be a home-run in order to reverse his fortunes. So it was with his post-Rev. Wright speech about race relations in March, 2008, when he was on the verge of being forced out of the campaign; similarly with his first debate appearance against John McCain in August 2008, when McCain's prospects seemed to be rising; and similarly last September with his address about health care to a Joint Session of Congress, when the summer-long "death panel" / "tea party" rhetoric had built great opposition to his plan. And so even it seemed to be in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, the circumstances of which practically guaranteed a falling-short-of-expectations result. In each of those cases, his performance exceeded expectations, improved his prospects, and reversed negative momentum.

Tonight? We'll see. I will say that the main pre-speech leak, about the "spending freeze," is different from his previous high-stakes appearances and is not very encouraging. If he doesn't mean it -- if this is a gimmick to claim "discipline" when much of the budget will still grow -- it's out of character precisely in its gimmickry. (Remember the campaign-era Obama's contempt for the gas-tax-holiday gimmick eagerly embraced by McCain and Hillary Clinton.) If he does mean it, it's at odds with the whole post-Great Depression logic (not to mention post-Obama inauguration policy) about the danger of cutting back on public "stimulus" spending too early during an economic contraction. Another reason to watch tonight.