The president won't give his annual State of the Union address until later tonight, but in an important way, the speech has already worked. For the past week or so, news report after news report has dutifully relayed the argument the president is planning to offer tonight: America needs to be competitive going forward, and to be competitive going forward, it needs to invest in things like infrastructure, R&D and education, not just reduce the deficit.
And it's...worked. The conversation has changed. We've stopped just talking about deficits and begun talking about investments.
....
In some ways, the danger for Democrats was that Republicans would've let the call for investment pass without a peep, agreeing in general even as the House never moved any of the money. But they're peeping plenty. It looks like we're going to have an argument over investment in this country, not just over deficit reduction. Obama will get to present his case that economic leadership requires investing in infrastructure and education and research, as well as cutting the deficit, and Republicans will be able to make their argument that the strategy should be pretty much all cuts. And that's exactly what the White House was hoping for.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/01/what_the_speech_has_done_alrea.html