Moving right?

President Barack Obama had been readying himself for his State of the Union address since the Nov. 2 election, the electorate's repudiation of big government and big spending. Obama had to respond to what he admitted was a "shellacking." So he agreed to extend President George W. Bush's tax cuts, recruited centrist Democrat William Daley, of Chicago, as his chief of staff and named General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt as his top economic adviser outside the government.

You knew from the anguished keening on the left that Obama was tacking right. With his address, he moved another few degrees. His message was calibrated in homage to not one but two elections - his party's 2010 debacle and his request for re-election in 2012. 

Obama acknowledged the disdain of many Americans for the rapid growth of spending on his watch by calling for reductions to a federal deficit that, this year, is expected to again reach $1.3 trillion. But he also called for more spending in areas popular with his political base. That notion didn't amuse House Republicans, who instead want to drop most federal spending to 2008 levels. 

State of the Union night is always the president's. Obama used the opportunity to project a more pragmatic, less liberal visage than he did on the same national stage a year earlier. This time, he needed to sound less like the man from the government who's here to help, and he did.

- Chicago Tribune