美国政党知识补课：State of the union, 国情咨文。按照美国惯例，每年年初，现任总统都要在国会做年度报告，阐述政府的施政方针，被称为“国情咨文”。 美国在开国初期，就有了“国情咨文”这种形式。经过几百年的演变，“国情咨文”已经变成“总统驾驭与国会关系的一个基本手段和发挥国家领导作用的有力方式”，特别是电视直播的出现，使“国情咨文”从“空洞的政策演说演变成一项重大的游说宣传”。历届美国总统都非常重视“国情咨文”的作用，奥巴马当然也不例外。美国媒体估计，他这一次国情咨文的重点将集中在经济、工作机会和医疗改革几个方面。

Obama Expected to Recast Presidency at State of the Union

President Obama's first year played out like a political version of Space Invaders, with the administration trying to shoot down all the advancing problems with a fusillade of rhetoric and policy proposals.

So when the president takes center stage for his first official State of the Union address on Wednesday, he will have that rare chance to define his presidency. He will be able to choose a theme, much as he did during his successful presidential campaign, and narrow down the list of priorities that cluttered his agenda in 2009.

While Obama has gotten Congress to vote his way on an impressive number of items, his big-ticket goals have largely gone unfulfilled, and recent high-profile Republican wins in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts underscore the distance voters have put between themselves and the president's party. Obama's approval rating now hovers at around 50 percent.

Going into year two, political strategists expect the president to re-center himself Wednesday as a hard-fighting, bank-busting, Obama-on-your-side jobs president, while acknowledging the hiccups in getting to this point.

At the State of the Union, the state of the presidency may be the question that most needs answering.

"It's going to be jobs, jobs, jobs. Economy, economy, economy," said Democratic strategist Joe Trippi. "Year two's gonna be this guy."

The White House says the speech will center on job creation and fiscal responsibility, among other issues.

Obama appeared to preview the contents and tone of that speech with his remarks over the past week. Coming off the Democrats' loss in the Massachusetts Senate special election, the president pivoted to take on Wall Street, assuming a fiercely populist tone as he proposed extra layers of financial regulation. On Friday, during a town hall meeting in Elyria, Ohio, he offered a fulsome defense of his administration's economic agenda -- ticking off the results of the stimulus package and his efforts to save the U.S. auto industry.

He called for new job creation measures, and on Monday he proposed doubling the child care tax credit for families earning under $85,000 and capping student loans payments.

"I did not run for president to turn away from these challenges. I didn't run to kick these challenges down the road. I ran for president to confront them -- once and for all," Obama said Friday.

The American people may need some reassuring, after Scott Brown's upset victory in Massachusetts sent Democrats into a frenzy to check the pulse of health care reform -- which up to that point seemed to be on the verge of passage. In the wake of Brown's win, Democrats acknowledge the bill cannot pass the House in its current form.

This leaves the president's signature domestic policy initiative, the mission the administration surely wanted to declare accomplished during Wednesday's address, on the ropes. How that initiative now fits into the president's broader, refocused economic agenda will certainly be a topic in the State of the Union.