Tonight's SOTU address could offer preview of Obama's re-election strategy

Jan 25 2012

Politico Pro reports that the Tuesday night speech will be full of political challenges for President Obama -; not the least of which is health policy.

Politico Pro: SOTU May Preview Obama Election Strategy
Health care presents a challenge in the Tuesday night speech, which comes about nine months before Election Day and is expected to be his most political. The health care law is his signature domestic policy accomplishment. It's also arguably his most controversial. The public attitude toward the law is virtually unchanged since this time last year. The latest Kaiser Family Foundation's Health Tracking poll shows 41 percent of Americans had a favorable opinion, and 43 percent have an unfavorable opinion. A year ago, the split was 42-41 percent. Opinion largely falls along party lines (Feder and Haberkorn, 1/24).

Meanwhile, The New Yorker takes an in-depth look at what policy memos reveal about Obama - 

The New Yorker: Memos Show Obama Scaled Back His Ambitions
The President's caution, and his concern about business, can be seen in the way he dealt with major interest groups. His policy to limit global warming, cap and trade, threatened the oil companies. Health care reform threatened insurers. Financial regulatory reform threatened the banks. With great specificity, the concerns of these and other interest groups were brought inside the Oval Office by Obama's aides. His health-insurance bill was crafted by building support from a delicate alliance of interest groups, and Obama personally guided the effort. On July 1, 2009, his top health-care adviser, Nancy-Ann DeParle, submitted a detailed nine-page policy memo asking whether the White House should consider including medical-malpractice reform in the legislation (Lizza, 1/23).