It’s State of the Union time.  The Super Bowl of political theater, the State of the Union is the one time of year that all of the federal government gets together in one room and pretends to be interested in what the President has to say.  It’s also probably the time of year when cable and Netflix traffic is at its peak, which is unfortunate because this puts other reality TV to shame.

This year, I imagine we could build a pretty good drinking game around what Obama will have to say, with words like “jobs,” “economy,” and “middle class” as triggers to drink.  Early bets say the President is really going to take it to the GOP this time.

The fanfare starts with an emotional nod to Gabby Giffords, and then Obama comes out of the President’s tunnel followed by a handful of higher ranking Senators and Congressmen.  He greets everyone for what seems like hours as he prepares to take the…podium?  Maybe a bully pulpit tonight?  Or will it be a soapbox.

The kickoff is predictable: the end to the Iraq war.  Obama comes out of the gate with one of his trump cards.  He follows it up immediately with the bin Laden card.  We are clearly in the “more foreign policy is awesome” segment.  This slides into the energy and infrastructure segment, and we hear our first mention of the middle class.  A quick touch on the GI bill in there too; the theme here is military, but Obama’s connecting it to jobs, economy, and the middle class.

The transition to “99 percent” talk was pretty good there, even for Obama.  It’s now very clearly an economy stump speech.  While fairly but defensively explaining the economic downturn and unemployment, Obama is masterful in spinning the positives of gained jobs and economic improvement, what little there is.

Biden is loving it.  Boehner not so much.  But Obama has most of the room applauding for him regularly.

Obama plays an interesting card here: “we’ve gone too far to turn back now.”  I like the implication of both unquestioned progress and a goal within our grasp.  Obama recalls on the auto bailout here, citing GM etc.’s current state as evidence of the success of his legislation there.  It’s a compelling argument.

Pittsburgh and Raleigh get shout outs.  And we’re told that America is more productive than China; the CEO of Masterlock wants to bring jobs home?  I will be curious to see the fact check on that.

Obama is ready to change the corporate tax rate.  That could go either way, but he suggests that companies outsourcing jobs should no longer get tax deductions.  Rather, he suggests deductions for hiring domestically, and stricter tax enforcement for companies finding loopholes.  A lot of suggestion of government giving incentives to companies to move their business procedures around.  Hey, that’s socialism!  Doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

Eric Cantor looks like somebody pooped in his mouth.

Obama is really hitting China hard.  First the return of jobs, and now he wants to strongly control their imports to prevent things like counterfeits from coming into the country.

Here’s the “person off the street” moment where somebody gets to sit next to the First Lady and be talked about.  Tonight it’s a woman who got laid off and then got a better job through an Obama program.  Great marketing.  With that, we segway back into jobs, and how to make them easier to find.  And from there, to education, to me the most important issue there is.

Obama is giving the love to teachers and has thrown out the right criticisms.  It gets radical; Obama wants to make it legally required for everyone to graduate from high school.  I can’t disagree but how will the Tea Party types respond?  We follow this up with commentary on tuition and student aid.  The message is strong but he falters a bit in his execution here.  College is too expensive, he says, but no substantive solution is proposed.

And again, the segway is brilliant; right into illegal immigration as it connects to higher education.  I swear, it’s seamless when he goes from one issue to the next.  He wants a law that will give immigrants the chance to earn citizenship.  “I will sign it right away.”

John McCain seems to think something is awkwardly humorous.  Steve Jobs’ wife is in the house, it seems.

And we’ve come full circle, back to jobs.  But from there, to defending the budget from the wrong kind of cuts.  But what are the wrong cuts?  From there, to oil and gas drilling.  Obama is ready to increase our off shore drilling immediately.  Obama surrenders the environmentalist card, apparently thinking the domestic energy card is worth more without the baggage of “cleanliness.”  But he leaves a warning to fracking on the table, at least.  However, it’s hard to take this seriously.

Why is Mitch McConnell so unhappy?

We do finally get “clean energy” in the speech.  But it’s lukewarm.  Still, Obama promises not to walk away from clean energy, and he has defined clean energy in terms of solar, wind, and ‘battery’ energy as being clean, so there could still be hope there.

The energy part is getting more promising as he goes…maybe starting with the fossil fuels was calculated to be this way.  We’re now on energy efficiency, finding ways to use less.  And if we’re going to be on clean energy, efficiency is a huge part of that.  “A power grid that wastes too much energy.”   Love it.  One tiny mention of our internet infrastructure follows.  Now I wonder if we will get a mention about SOPA or PIPA.

From energy to home ownership; again, brilliant transition.  We’re now talking about how the banks can help home owners and that’s going to be a crowd pleaser for a lot of people no matter what.

It’s kind of all coming together here; we’ve move to regulations.  Obama simultaneously touts his record of approving regulations (fewer than Bush) while also cautioning against the removal of regulations.  Fewer, but better, I guess.  The principal is sound, but the execution is what will matter.

Oh, what a terrible pun…a farmer spilled some milk and Obama doesn’t pass up the chance to draw a cheap laugh.

Obama jumps from here to touting his health care legislation, underwhelming as it might have been.  Again, he makes a compelling argument in a few words.  And he’s wrapping it all back up together again.  We’re coving some of the same ground, and Obama says no to future bailouts “ever again.”  The focus is clearing.  Obama is now taking a swing at big corporations in general.  A subtle appeal to the Occupy movement…siding with them without siding with them.  A politically calculated wink and nudge, or an effort to get their support without giving them any in return?  Hard to say.

Obama swings it around to tax cuts and budget cuts.  First, he pushes the payroll tax cut again, but then he gets to the meat, which is the Bush tax cuts on top earners.  Obama says he wants to pay higher taxes, and others in his bracket should too.  Good job owning the issue with that statement, and he cites Tom Coburn, a Republican, as someone he agrees with on this issue…and he drops the class warfare card!  Obama is really not pulling his punches on this issue.

And he’s breaking the fourth wall a bit.  He says voters are right to be cynical about Washington and that they shouldn’t blame us for thinking they can’t get anything done.  Again, really owning the issue here.  And from there, he lays down masterful blows: end insider trading in congress, stop congressmen voting on bills that affect companies they own stock in, and crack down on lobbyists influencing legislation.  And then he asks for the Senate to stop being so inefficient.   But he also accepts blame for his part, or at least his branch’s part in the slowdown in Washington.

Obama throws a bone to Republicans here in what must be his home stretch.  He calls for more bipartisanship and points to his achievements in turning to the private sector over government solutions, though admittedly some of these were against his will.  This has been Obama’s message since he took office and he’s hammering it home again, but it’s hard not to be jaded about it after hearing it so many times and seeing it not to come to fruition.

We’ve circled back to foreign policy and the speech is getting less practical and more ideological.  Everybody in the room decides it’s safe to clap now since we’ve gone abstract.  Obama supports democracy in the Arab world where so many revolutions have occurred…but of course he does.  What else are you going to say here?  From there, we get a little more concrete again: Obama does not want Iran to have nuclear warheads.  We get a little stick and a little carrot on this point before Obama switches to boosting his Israeli ties.  And from there, more generally to his record reinvigorating our reputation around the world.

Back to veterans, and how we need to support them better.  Always a winning issue across the board.  This one gets resounding applause.  Obama is ready to wrap this up.  He lavishes praise on our veterans as doing their jobs with a heroic anecdote about Seal Team 6.  And he ties that back to our roles as citizens to watch each others’ backs like the Seals did.  Very ideological and emotional, a play he often uses to great success, so no surprise here.  This is where his charisma really shines.  And that’s it.

Solid speech, some low points early on, particularly with his energy policy, followed by a strong finish.  He gets kind of abstract at times and threatens to go off the rails.  The speech was very well written though and in the end, everything came together nicely.  The message was clear, the campaigning was obvious but not overwhelming, which is to be expected, and in general there seemed to be a good balance of appeasement and demands, which is to say somewhat more of the latter than the former.  Obama’s biggest enemy is himself; we’ve heard this song before and it sounds as good as ever, but the results have been disappointing for a lot.  So he had to find ways to spice it up.  He did this with the tax talks, which sounded great and should give him a bit of a bump in polls over the next couple days, but we’ll come back to reality in short order when we remember that the GOP isn’t having any of that.  If anything, we just heard a preview of the campaign trail Obama we will all be familiar with in just a few months.