Obama faces uphill battle to sell State of Union 'year of action' Last minute preparations: As seen from the Rose Garden, President Barack Obama works at his desk in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on Monday ahead of Tuesday night's State of the Union speech. Washington: The line first started popping up from the White House late last year. It was said that 2014 would be the "year of action." Now the term is being used almost as a slogan with which to sell Tuesday night's State of the Union address (midday Wednesday, AEDT). "What we saw last year in 2013 was a Washington that did not deliver for the American people," said Barack Obama's press secretary Jay Carney on ABC's This Week on Sunday as he discussed Mr Obama's annual report to Congress. The President sees this as a year of action, to work with Congress where he can and to bypass Congress where necessary. To lift folks who want to come up into the middle class. Success for the White House will be measured on those terms - on how much the speech manages to focus attention on growing inequality and how much it justifies to the American people the President's plan to use his executive powers rather than Congress to pursue his agenda in the last years of his presidency. Muddying the waters: Republican Mike Huckabee's comments in Washington on Thursday on women's libidos have made it impossible for Republicans to focus the debate on Mr Obama. A year into his second term Mr Obama's approval is as low as George W. Bush's was at this stage of his presidency, just over 43 per cent. Mr Obama's approval has sunk as much for what his administration has done (such as the NSA's domestic spying program) as for what it has failed to do (like properly introduce key elements of the Affordable Care Act). A new survey by Pew Research suggests the White House has good reason to believe its plan to bypass the Congress might be well received, or at least well understood. Pew found Democrats hold wide leads over Republicans in some key governing traits, including willingness to work with political leaders from the other party (52 per cent Democrats, 32 per cent Republicans) and concern "with the needs of people like me" (52 per cent Democrats, 32 per cent Republicans). Just 15 per cent believe relations between the two parties will improve over the coming year, while 59 per cent think they will stay the same and 22 per cent believe they will get worse. There are ominous signs for Mr Obama's attempt to reset the agenda with the speech and thereby improve his party's run-up to the November mid-term elections. The White House has made it clear it wants to use executive orders to act on the environment, but the survey finds just 29 per cent of Americans believe the environment to be a policy priority. While the White House wants to focus on inequality just 49 per cent consider "dealing with the problems of the poor and needy" to be a priority, down 8 per cent over the past year. As White House ciphers have been out and about in Washington over the past few days previewing the speech, there has been little unanimity so far in the Republican response (save from the obvious question: "if this year is about action, what were the other ones about?"). This is in large part because the Republican Party still lacks a natural leader. Over recent days when the House Speaker John Boehner might have been challenging the White House line, attention has been focused on Mike Huckabee, the Christian evangelical radio host and one-time Republican presidential candidate who made a speech last week at a Republican Party national meeting that veered weirdly into contraception and the female libido. "It's not where our party stands, it isn't really even what Mike Huckabee meant to say," the Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said sadly on Monday morning. But it was what he said, and it was what everyone else was talking about. As if to prove the point three Republicans will offer a GOP rejoinder to the State of the Union speech. Cathy McMorris Rodgers will present the official response; the Tea Party will have Mike Lee speak on its behalf and the libertarian Rand Paul has announced he will post a response to YouTube.