State of the Union: the 'yes we can' president is back

There are two distinct advantages to being a "lame duck" president who is entering the final two years of his second term. The first is, by definition, that you no longer need to get re-elected so you can do what you want. The second is that you are not really expected to achieve much before the fourth-quarter clock runs out.

Just two months after losing control of the Senate in his last mid-term election, Barack Obama cockily acknowledged his new-found liberty in his State of the Union address last night when he told a joint session of Congress: "I have no more campaigns to run. I know—because I won both of them."

Instead, presidents traditionally use their penultimate State of the Union to burnish their "legacy."

By this stage, most two-term presidents find themselves on the defensive after years in power. Their State of the Union becomes a rearguard action: Ronald Reagan fending off the Iran-Contra scandal; Bill Clinton struggling to survive Monica Lewinsky's semen-stained blue dress; George W Bush trying to convince Americans that it was "mission accomplished" in Iraq. Richard Nixon didn't even make it this far because of Watergate.

Mr Obama, by striking contrast, has nothing for which to reproach himself. The economy, which he inherited in the deepest post-war crisis, was steaming along at 5 per cent growth in the third quarter of last year. Unemployment has fallen to 5.6 per cent. Prices are down at the petrol pump and the stock market is up. Mr Obama's personal popularity ratings have just resurfaced above 50 per cent. As far as we know, his relationship with his wife Michelle is fine, despite his flicker of interest in Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt who he famously took a selfie with during Nelson Mandela's memorial in 2013. In his speech, he boasted that America had enjoyed a "breakthrough year."

Mr Obama has always had a unique problem in terms of his legacy. His greatest achievement was, and will always be, simply getting elected. Becoming the first African-American president, indeed the first black president of any First World country, marked an epochal change in political culture that will forever remain a landmark. His greatest legacy was achieved the day he took office. Which means he has a tough act to follow: himself.

Nonetheless, he has notched up two other signal achievements that will live for the ages—both obtained with the kind of brutality not usually associated with a Harvard-educated metrosexual. The first is "Obamacare," a Democratic goal since the 1930s, which the Republicans kindly named in his honour in the same way that "Boris bikes" are (with less justification) associated with the London mayor. The second achievement that no one can take away from Mr Obama is that he took the risky decision to kill Osama Bin Laden. Despite another helicopter crash, that mission turned out a lot better than Jimmy Carter's aborted rescue for the hostages in Iran.

Since his mid-term defeat, Mr Obama has made clear that rather than capitulate to the newly Republican Congress, he will continue to chart his own course. In unilateral actions, he has struck a climate change deal with China, announced the restoration of ties to Communist Cuba and effectively legalised millions of immigrants. Last night he brazenly warned Congress just 10 minutes into his speech that he would wield his veto to protect Obamacare, Wall Street reforms, and his immigration policy. Although only symbolic, Mr Obama also made the first-ever reference to "transgendered" people in a State of the Union address.

His State of the Union address made clear that he sees his biggest vulnerability to his progressive credentials to be the continuing inequality in America, a country that likes to see itself as a "Middle Class" nation.

This was the Thomas Piketty State of the Union. Mr Obama has embraced the message of the French economist's bestselling book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" of inequality run amok. The core of his speech was an appeal for greater economic fairness.

"It's now up to us to choose who we want to be over the next 15 years, and for decades to come," Mr Obama said. "Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well? Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes for everyone who makes the effort?"

Though he did not embrace M. Piketty's call for a global wealth tax, Mr Obama did attempt to address the problem he has identified with the concentration of capital. The tax paid on capital gains in America is just 20 per cent (plus a 2.3 per cent Medicare surcharge)—significantly lower than the basic 25 per cent income tax. That means a working Joe pays more on his pay-packet than a billionaire does on his investment income. Mr Obama's proposals would raise capital gains tax back to 28 per cent, as well as closing a tax loophole that shields hundreds of billions of dollars in inherited wealth and levying a new fee on big banks. The money would be spent on middle class concerns such as tax credits for child care and college tuition.

The proposals have no prospect of passing the Republican-controlled Congress. Mr Obama knows that. However, they will frame the debate for the 2016 presidential election. His focus on economic fairness will bolster Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law school professor and Massachusetts senator seen as the new spokeswoman of left-wing Democrats. It may well be unwelcome to many of Hillary Clinton's multi-millionaire donors. But he has set his party's agenda.

This is the "Yes We Can" president insisting he wants to be recorded as an agent of change. Although he has often disappointed the left of his party, Mr Obama desperately wants to go down in history as a liberal and is saying "Yes We STILL can."