“It’s going to be a fighting speech,’’ said Robert Dallek, a presidential historian and Boston University professor emeritus of history. “He’s going to lay out a contrasting agenda to what the Republicans, particularly Mitt Romney, has been saying about the use of federal power and the way the government approaches the economic difficulties that the country continues to face.’’
The White House would not disclose specific policy details Obama is expected to propose in the speech, which will be delivered at 9 p.m. to a joint session of Congress, Cabinet members, and Supreme Court justices as well as a nationally televised audience.
But senior administration officials said yesterday he would outline four key themes: improving manufacturing to generate greater innovation and productivity, a new energy strategy that would create jobs and lower the costs for families and businesses, reforming the way American students and workers are educated and trained, and encouraging the basic values of fairness and calling on everyone to take responsibility.
The president will draw heavily from the economic speech he delivered last month in Osawatomie, Kan., when he called the times a “make-or-break moment for the middle class.’’
In the speech, he extolled the positive role government can play in ensuring every American gets a fair shot at success and does her or his part.
He cited President Theodore Roosevelt, praising him as a Republican who broke up monopolies and prohibited businesses from profiting by exploiting children and selling unsafe food.
Roosevelt, he said, understood that the “free market has never been a free license to take whatever you can from whomever you can.’’
Acknowledging that Obama must continue to work with a divided Congress, his spokesman, Jay Carney, said yesterday that despite this being an election year, Obama intends to call for action and “get things done that matter to the American people.’’
