President Barack Obama on Wednesday night tacked to the right with appeals for tax cuts for small business and new investments in off-shore oil drilling and nuclear power. He tacked to the left with renewed vows to let gays serve in the military and to get U.S. troops out of Iraq. 
 
 He sounded at times like a Bill Clinton-style centrist, at others like a bank-bashing populist. He taunted Republicans, and also presented himself as a lonely tribune of cooperation and bipartisan civility in Washington. 
 
 In a favorable light, his State of the Union speech may have revealed the mind of a leader who has never cared much about traditional ideological categories and is determined to create his own results-oriented composite of ideas from across the spectrum. 
 
 Less charitably, the address could be interpreted as the work of a president who is desperately improvising by touching every political erogenous zone he and his advisers can think of. 
 
 Under either judgment, however, it was inescapable that his 69-minute speech — for all the rush of words and policy ideas — was a document of downsized ambitions for a downsized moment in his presidency. 
 
 It was presented to the Congress and a national audience with all of Obama’s usual fluency and brio. There were flashes of wit, as when he noted ruefully that “by now, it should be fairly obvious that I didn't take on health care because it was good politics.” 
 
 And there were flashes of defiance, with Obama delivering what the White House clearly intended to be the headline quote: “We don’t quit; I don’t quit.” 
 
 But there was no mistaking throughout this box-checking, loosely bundled speech how different the political context in the winter of 2010 is from the winter of 2009. 
 
 Obama came into office promising to shatter expectations of what was possible in Washington. The talk then was of a presidential “big bang” — health care, global warming, and financial reform legislation all in one year — and chief of staff Rahm Emanuel boasted that his motto was to “never let a serious crisis go to waste.” 
 
 With the big-bang strategy officially a failure, Obama’s speech revealed in real-time a president groping for a new and more effective one. The speech was woven with frequent acknowledgements that the laws of political gravity applied to him after all. 
 
 The first and most pressing legislative goals he identified were a comparatively small jobs bill that has passed the House but is languishing in the Senate, and a Bill Clinton-style menu of tax incentives for business. 
 
 Health care, the consuming issue of 2009 and the one on which Obama aides insisted they should be judged, did not show up until more than halfway through. ||||| Barack Obama offered a new political product on Tuesday night, a brand with a distinctively retro flavor — “Democrat Classic.” 
 
 Four years after his first State of the Union, Obama rolled out a series of vintage proposals from his party’s amply stocked policy cupboard — a $1.75-an-hour hike in the federal minimum wage, an ambitious plan to expand public preschool education to all kids, reintroduction of a $50 billion infrastructure plan, and resurrection of climate change legislation. 
 
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 reset POLITICO LIVE reaction, analysis Obama's 2013 SOTU speech 
 
 (PHOTOS: Scenes from Obama State of the Union 2013) 
 
 Taken as a whole, it marked the latest step in a clear effort by Obama to nudge the nation’s politics to the center-left, a shift from the center-right politics of Ronald Reagan that have dominated American political life for more than three decades. 
 
 The scale of his new spending proposals was relatively modest, but the new programs targeted improving life on the lowest rungs of America’s working class, delighting liberals and eliciting charges of overreach by Republicans, who are unlikely to pass much of what Obama laid on the table Tuesday night. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Did Obama stretch the truth?) 
 
 “It is our unfinished task to restore the basic bargain that built this country — the idea that if you work hard and meet your responsibilities, you can get ahead, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or who you love,” he said as he began a speech that lived up to its billing as a bookend to his progressive inaugural address three weeks ago. 
 
 “It is our unfinished task to make sure that this government works on behalf of the many, and not just the few; that it encourages free enterprise, rewards individual initiative, and opens the doors of opportunity to every child across this great nation of ours,” he added. 
 
 Obama called for bipartisanship, but drew limits at how far he was willing to go to cut deals, a marked contrast from his first term, when he sought with little success to reach a grand bargain on the budget and deficits with GOP leaders. 
 
 (Full text: State of the Union speech) 
 
 Over and again in the hourlong speech, Obama cast himself as champion of the working classes and portrayed Republicans as protectors of the wealthy and powerful — in a speech that began with a John F. Kennedy quote and could have been comfortably delivered by JFK, FDR or LBJ. 
 
 Obama’s more immediate aim was to back Republicans into a corner on the upcoming fight over $1.2 trillion in budget cuts triggered on March 1 by the sequester by harnessing public opinion for his own approach — through fewer budget cuts than Republicans want, a more modest approach to reforming runway entitlement programs and a greater emphasis on raising new tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy. ||||| President Obama's fourth State of the Union address is in the books -- a 6,000-plus word speech in which he laid out both the blueprint and the underlying justification for his vision of his next four years. 
 
 We live-tweeted the whole thing -- and did a bit of pre- and post-game analysis -- but also jotted down a few notable takeaways from the address. They're below. What was your biggest takeaway? 
 
 1. Obama goes big on guns: With a chamber sprinkled with the families of victims of gun violence in Connecticut and Illinois, as well as former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), the biggest question looming over President Obama's speech was how forceful he would be on guns. It's no secret that the proposals put forward by Vice President Biden have met with an indifferent, to put it mildly, response from Congress. 
 
 Obama's decision to save his remarks on guns until the end of the State of the Union and to aggressively urge a vote on all of his gun proposals was, by far, the boldest portion of his speech. If you are looking for a takeaway from the speech, it is this: "Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote." Obama's comments on guns will be the lasting legacy of this speech and a sign that his past pledges to use all of his political power to bring about measures he believes will curb gun violence were not simply rhetoric. 
 
 2. Obama's vision of government: Ever since Bill Clinton declared that the "era of big government is over" 17 years ago, Democrats have been grappling with what role the government should play in average Americans' lives. Obama sought to articulate the party's answer to that question Tuesday night with the line: "It's not a bigger government we need but a smarter government that sets priorities and invests in broad-based growth." The phrasing attempts to strike a balance between the less-government-the-better view of most Republicans and the New Deal view that Democrats before Clinton long ascribed to. 
 
 3. A major climate change play: In the first 30 minutes of the speech, President Obama not only mentioned climate change but also made clear that if Congress didn't act, he would. His rhetoric on the issue was tough, echoing how he framed the issue in his inaugural address several weeks ago. "We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen, were all just a freak coincidence," said Obama. "Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science -- and act before it's too late." That's about as direct a call for action by Congress on climate change as you will hear from a president. 
 
 4. A major victory for voting rights advocates: The debate over who can vote, when they can vote and who is trying to stop them animates the Democratic base like no other. Obama dedicated time to the topic in his speech -- and announced the formation of a nonpartisan commission to improve the voting process. "When any Americans -- no matter where they live or what their party -- are denied that right simply because they can't wait for five, six, seven hours just to cast their ballot, we are betraying our ideals," said Obama. 
 
 5. The economy, kind of: Yes, the bulk of the speech -- in terms of words spoken -- dealt with the economy. And, yes, he urged Congress to avert the sequester and not shut the government down at the end of next month. But the devil, as always, is in the details, and Obama didn't offer many of them. With Republicans already on record as opposed to any attempt to bypass the sequester, it's hard to see how the Congress finds a way to do so. Yes, President Obama talked about the economy. But it's hard to say he moved the debate forward. At all. 
 
 Read more from Washington Post Politics: 
 
 Fact-checking President Obama's speech 
 
 Obama urges Congress to make middle class job one 
 
 In GOP response, Rubio offers back-to-basics conservative message ||||| President Barack Obama offered a broad defense of his administration on Tuesday, delivering what amounted to a valedictory address for his final State of the Union, while offering a pointed critique of Donald Trump and other Republicans who he says are "peddling fiction” about the nation's health. 
 
 In a speech that urged Americans to bridge political differences and embrace change as a force for good, Obama repeatedly hit the GOP — overtly and obliquely — for preying on people's fears, whether about immigrants, Muslims or the economy. And, amid a bitter 2016 presidential campaign, Obama's implied political message was clear: unless a Democrat succeeds him, the progress made during his two terms could be reversed. 
 
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 “There have been those who told us to fear the future; who claimed we could slam the brakes on change, promising to restore past glory if we just got some group or idea that was threatening America under control. And each time, we overcame those fears,” Obama said in a veiled reference to Trump, the GOP poll leader. 
 
 “We did not, in the words of Lincoln, adhere to the ‘dogmas of the quiet past.’ Instead we thought anew, and acted anew. We made change work for us, always extending America’s promise outward, to the next frontier, to more and more people. And because we did — because we saw opportunity where others saw only peril — we emerged stronger and better than before.” 
 
 As Obama enters the eighth year of his presidency, he is already battling for attention, thanks in no small part to the incendiary rhetoric from Trump on the campaign trail. But he also included veiled jabs at the other Republican candidates, referencing Ted Cruz’s pledge to carpet bomb the Islamic State (“our answer needs to be more than tough talk or calls to carpet bomb civilians”) and Chris Christie’s warning that the country is already in World War III (“as we focus on destroying ISIL, over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands”). 
 
 In the loftier parts of his address, Obama hit four major themes: giving people a fair shot at economic opportunity, using technology to tackle challenges such as climate change, keeping America safe without turning it into the world's "policeman," and improving the dysfunctional political system. The speech mentioned many Obama achievements, including economic gains, health care reform and the nuclear deal with Iran. Its emphasis on America's strength and capability, and its call for more political unity, also stood in contrast to the doom-and-gloom emanating from the presidential race. 
 
 “The future we want — opportunity and security for our families; a rising standard of living and a sustainable, peaceful planet for our kids — all that is within our reach. But it will only happen if we work together,” the president told a packed House of Representatives chamber. “It will only happen if we can have rational, constructive debates. It will only happen if we fix our politics.” 
 
 But partisan sniping immediately preceded his address, with Republicans grousing that the president wasn’t planning to mention the news that Iran had taken into custody 10 U.S. sailors whose vessels had apparently drifted into Iranian waters. 
 
 The speech did reveal a president still supremely confident in his political abilities. As he did last year, Obama ad-libbed a reminder about his electoral victories. Early in the speech, he humorously nodded to the 2016ers in the crowd, saying he would try to keep the speech shorter than normal because "I know some of you are antsy to get back to Iowa." 
 
 He added, off-script, “I spent some time there. I’ll be shaking hands afterward if you want some tips.” 
 
 He also offered fresh context about how he’ll approach the campaign season, promising to “travel the country to push for reforms” that diminish the power of big money in politics and make it easier to vote. "We have to end the practice of drawing our congressional districts so that politicians can pick their voters, and not the other way around," Obama said. "We have to reduce the influence of money in our politics, so that a handful of families and hidden interests can’t bankroll our elections — and if our existing approach to campaign finance can’t pass muster in the courts, we need to work together to find a real solution. We’ve got to make voting easier, not harder, and modernize it for the way we live now." 
 
 By campaigning under the banner of voting rights, Obama will be able to travel to swing states like Florida, Virginia, Ohio and North Carolina and speak directly to the sizable blocs of black voters who might not have the same enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders as they did for the first black president. 
 
 Even before the next round of voting starts, however, Obama said he hopes to work with Congress on some still-unfinished initiatives in the works, such as criminal justice reform. Obama also made it clear he's not intending to act as a lame duck even if it is his last year. For instance, he announced he was launching a new national effort to cure cancer, and that Vice President Joe Biden, who recently lost his son to the disease, would oversee it. It's an initiative Obama, quoting Biden, compared to America's trip to the moon. 
 
 "For the loved ones we’ve all lost, for the family we can still save, let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all,” Obama said. 
 
 "We have to end the practice of drawing our congressional districts so that politicians can pick their voters, and not the other way around," Obama said. "We have to reduce the influence of money in our politics, so that a handful of families and hidden interests can’t bankroll our elections — and if our existing approach to campaign finance can’t pass muster in the courts, we need to work together to find a real solution. We’ve got to make voting easier, not harder, and modernize it for the way we live now. 
 
 On the economy, Obama stressed how far the country had come since teetering on the verge of a depression as he took office, noting that the U.S. is “in the middle of the longest streak of private-sector job creation in history. More than 14 million new jobs; the strongest two years of job growth since the ’90s; an unemployment rate cut in half.” 
 
 "Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction," Obama said. 
 
 But he also acknowledged the ongoing anxiety among American workers, especially as technological changes have affected so many fields. 
 
 “Today, technology doesn’t just replace jobs on the assembly line, but any job where work can be automated. Companies in a global economy can locate anywhere, and face tougher competition. As a result, workers have less leverage for a raise. Companies have less loyalty to their communities. And more and more wealth and income is concentrated at the very top,” Obama said. 
 
 The solutions, Obama said, include an improved education system, changing “outdated regulations” on the private sector, and strengthening Social Security and other safety net programs. 
 
 Technology and corporate innovation are key to tackling climate change, Obama said. It was another part of his speech that indirectly mocked Republicans, many of whom deny the climate is changing in any meaningful way. 
 
 "If anybody still wants to dispute the science around climate change, have at it," Obama said. "You’ll be pretty lonely, because you’ll be debating our military, most of America’s business leaders, the majority of the American people, almost the entire scientific community, and 200 nations around the world who agree it’s a problem and intend to solve it." 
 
 On foreign policy, Obama called on Congress to pass a new "authorization for the use of military force" measure that would essentially renew the legal basis for the U.S. fight against terrorist groups such as the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Such proposals have failed to gain traction in Congress, despite bipartisan efforts, but there is renewed interest in the House. But even as Obama outlined the steps his administration has taken to fight the Islamic State, he also tried to put the threat of terrorism in perspective. 
 
 "Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks and twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages pose an enormous danger to civilians and must be stopped. But they do not threaten our national existence,” he said. “That’s the story ISIL wants to tell; that’s the kind of propaganda they use to recruit." 
 
 The president also reiterated his desire to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, a longstanding goal made hard to achieve due to restrictions imposed by Congress. The president said the prison is "expensive, it’s unnecessary, and it only serves as a recruitment brochure for our enemies." 
 
 Obama cast his administration's restoration of diplomatic ties to Cuba as a wise move that could yield more dividends if Congress were to allow it. "You want to consolidate our leadership and credibility in the hemisphere? Recognize that the Cold War is over. Lift the embargo" on Cuba, Obama said. 
 
 Obama also urged lawmakers to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive trade deal among Pacific Rim nations. Despite strong GOP support for the trade agreement, the odds of speedy approval are not high: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already said the TPP shouldn’t be debated until after the 2016 election. 
 
 At one point, Obama also urged an end to "politics that targets people because of race or religion" — another apparent jab at Trump, who proposed the temporary ban on Muslims after the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. 
 
 "When politicians insult Muslims, when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid bullied, that doesn’t make us safer," he said. "That’s not telling it like it is. It’s just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world. It makes it harder to achieve our goals. And it betrays who we are as a country." 
 
 On that front, there were signs that the GOP leadership is also wary of the divisiveness emerging from the 2016 race. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley took a veiled swipe at Trump in her Republican response to the State of the Union. 
 
 “Today, we live in a time of threats like few others in recent memory,” Haley will say. “During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation. No one who is willing to work hard, abide by our laws, and love our traditions should ever feel unwelcome in this country." 
 
 First lady Michelle Obama’s guests symbolized some of the more contentious disputes pitting Obama against Republicans. One chair was left empty in honor of victims of gun violence. Another seat went to Refaai Hamo, a Syrian refugee. Other guests symbolized issues including drug addiction, technological innovation and gay marriage. 
 
 West Wing aides, mindful that many Americans are monitoring the speech on mobile devices, ramped up their social media use to boost Obama’s message. About 1.4 million tweets mentioned the address throughout the day on Tuesday, about a million during the speech itself, according to data compiled by Cision. The White House also annotated the speech on Genius, streamed an "enhanced" version of the speech online (complete with graphics and photos to make the substantive and emotional case for his points), and offered up behind-the-scenes moments on SnapChat and Instagram. The president gave a 90-second speech from the Oval Office to preview the grander address on Tuesday evening that was broadcast live on Facebook, and he sat down with Matt Lauer from NBC’s “Today” on Monday. Obama will continue to promote his message throughout this week, likely focusing on coverage gains through Obamacare in Omaha on Wednesday and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Thursday. On Friday, he'll sit down for interviews with three YouTube stars. 
 
 In the interview with Lauer, which aired Tuesday, Obama voiced regret at not being the unifying force he had hoped to be — and campaigned on — since reaching the White House. He expressed similar frustration on Tuesday night, saying, “It’s one of the few regrets of my presidency — that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. There’s no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I’ll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office.” 
 
 But he also suggested he hadn’t given up on the dreams of “hope and change” — and that Americans shouldn’t, either. "A better politics doesn’t mean we have to agree on everything," Obama said. "But democracy does require basic bonds of trust between its citizens." ||||| That was an incredibly ambitious speech. 
 
 Imagine, for a moment, that President Obama managed to pass every policy he proposed Tuesday night. Within a couple of years, every 4-year-old would have access to preschool. The federal minimum wage would be at $9 -- higher than it's been, after adjusting for inflation, since 1981. There'd be a cap-and-trade program limiting our carbon emissions and a vast infrastructure investment to upgrade our roads and bridges. Taxes would be higher, guns would be harder to come by, and undocumented immigrants would have a path to citizenship. America would be a markedly different country. 
 
 In some ways, what was most noticeable about the speech was what wasn't in it: Nothing. It was difficult to come up with a single policy favored by Obama's party but left out of this speech. The speech included the politically possible and the politically implausible. It had the poll-tested policies, like small tweaks to encourage manufacturing jobs, and policies that have a tougher time in the polls, like putting a price on carbon. 
 
 It's often the case that candidates are more ambitious than presidents. But Obama's second term is showing precisely the reverse progression. The speech went much further than Obama's 2012 Democratic convention speech. There, his address was notable mainly for how modest the policy proposals were. Here, his speech was notable for the sweeping nature of the proposed changes. Obama's agenda hasn't been this bold since 2009. 
 
 The difference between 2009 and 2013, of course, is that Democrats no longer control the House of Representatives. Most of these proposals have little chance of becoming law, at least right now. 
 
 But the difference between 2011 and 2013 is that Obama isn't content to let Republicans drive the agenda. He just won an election, and he intends to set the terms of the discussion. The past two years have been all deficit, all the time. But the president doesn't intend to let the next two years be similarly dominated by the debt. Republicans such as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.) have begun working to find an agenda that goes beyond deficits and articulates a positive role the government can play in an individual's life. Obama is beating them to it. 
 
 Much of Obama's second-term agenda may not pass. But he has an agenda, and it's an ambitious one.
– Pundits agree: President Obama's speech last night marked a firm push for progressive goals, shedding much of the bipartisan focus we've heard from him in recent years. A sampling of what analysts are saying: The speech had a "retro flavor—'Democrat Classic,'" writes Glenn Thrush at Politico. It "could have been comfortably delivered by JFK, FDR, or LBJ," marking "the latest step in a clear effort by Obama to nudge the nation’s politics to the center-left." At the same time, it had its similarities to Marco Rubio's response: "At times, the blue-collar rhetoric employed by Obama and Rubio tracked so closely as to co-mingle, like alternating verses in a Bruce Springsteen song." "That was an incredibly ambitious speech," writes Ezra Klein at the Washington Post. If all the measures Obama proposed last night, from gun control to minimum wage, were to pass, "America would be a noticeably different country," he notes. "It’s often the case that candidates are more ambitious than presidents. But Obama’s second term is showing precisely the reverse progression." The Los Angeles Times calls the speech "the most forceful defense of liberal values uttered on this occasion by any president since Lyndon Johnson"—a comment similar to Newt Gingrich's, the New York Times notes. But while Obama "has the support of the American people" on many of his goals, "it wasn't clear how he'd get his ideas, many of them recycled from his first term, through a polarized Congress." Despite that polarization, the president "explained to a wide audience what could be achieved if there were even a minimal consensus in Washington," note the editors of the New York Times. Obama's "task now is to turn his widespread public support into a wedge to break Washington’s gridlock."