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(Bloomberg) — President Obama will say Americans must “fix our politics” to secure the nation’s future, according to excerpts of his final State of the Union address, a speech aimed at influencing the campaign to succeed him and cement his policies in the Democratic platform.

“A better politics doesn’t mean we have to agree on everything. This is a big country, with different regions and attitudes and interests,” Obama will say, according to the excerpts released by the White House. “Our Founders distributed power between states and branches of government, and expected us to argue, just as they did, over the size and shape of government, over commerce and foreign relations, over the meaning of liberty and imperatives of security.”

Obama will speak in the chamber of the House of Representatives beginning at 9 p.m. New York time. His message may be clouded by developments in Iran, where 10 American sailors were detained on Tuesday.

While U.S. officials insisted that the service members were safe, uncertainty over the duration of their detention prompted new questions about the president’s foreign policy. The Associated Press reported that the sailors would be released Wednesday morning, local time.

Obama and his aides view the State of the Union address as perhaps the last, best chance to burnish his legacy before a national audience — and convince Americans they should vote to keep a Democrat in the White House. He will paint the nation as brimming with opportunity thanks to the economy’s rebound during his presidency.

“We live in a time of extraordinary change –- change that’s reshaping the way we live, the way we work, our planet and our place in the world,” Obama plans to say. “And whether we like it or not, the pace of this change will only accelerate.”

Detained Sailors

Some lawmakers, including Cory Gardner, a Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, suggested that the administration should delay the speech so that it could brief Congress on the Iranian incident.

“The White House needs to be honest and transparent as quickly as possible with the members of the Congress, the House and the Senate,” Gardner said in an interview with CNN. “Perhaps that even means a delay to the start of the State of the Union tonight to talk about exactly what happened.”

Jen Psaki, the president’s communications director, said the White House wasn’t planning to tweak the speech to address the situation in Iran. The U.S. had been assured of the safety of the sailors, she said in an interview on CNN.

Instead, Obama plans to focus on his core message of economic and social opportunity, according to the excerpts.

“America has been through big changes before –- wars and depression, the influx of immigrants, workers fighting for a fair deal, and movements to expand civil rights,” Obama will say. “Each time, 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.”

Economic Rebound

Unemployment, now at 5 percent, has been cut in half from its peak in October 2009, while annual auto sales have doubled over the same period. About 17.6 million Americans are estimated to have gained health insurance due to Obama’s health-care overhaul, the Affordable Care Act.

Republicans point to stagnant wages as a key indicator of continued distress in the economy. Their presidential candidates have all vowed to repeal the health law, which they call a government overstep and blame for rising insurance premiums.

“Middle-income wages are flat,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, said at a news conference Tuesday before Obama’s speech. “Forty-six million people are still living in poverty today, among the highest poverty rates in a generation. This is not the signs of a recovery.” (Bold by MOV)

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley will deliver the Republican response to Obama’s speech.

Republican Response

“The president’s record has often fallen far short of his soaring words,” Haley will say, according to excerpts released by Ryan’s office. “Many Americans are still feeling the squeeze of an economy too weak to raise income levels. We’re feeling a crushing national debt, a health-care plan that has made insurance less affordable and doctors less available, and chaotic unrest in many of our cities.”

The president is enjoying the momentum of an unexpectedly productive year that saw a nuclear deal with Iran, the negotiation of a global climate agreement, reestablishment of relations with Cuba and a bipartisan budget deal. Major Supreme Court rulings bolstered the Affordable Care Act and legalized gay marriage nationwide.

“Part of what I want to do in this last address is to remind people, you know what? We’ve got a lot of good things going for us,” Obama said earlier Tuesday in an interview with NBC News.
But the end of last year also saw terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, that shook public confidence in Obama’s strategy to combat the militant group Islamic State. A resurgent Russia has challenged the U.S. in Ukraine and in Syria. North Korea last week tested what it claimed was a hydrogen bomb, though the Obama administration has cast doubt the device tested was that advanced.

World On Fire

“The world is on fire,” Ryan said. Haley will say that Americans face “the most dangerous terrorist threat our nation has seen since September 11th,” according to her excerpts.

“This president appears either unwilling or unable to deal with it,” she will say.
Domestically, there is deep discord among Americans over issues including income inequality, race and gun control, the latter of which Obama has made a priority for his final year in office.

Republican presidential candidates have portrayed a country in crisis while on the campaign trail. Front-runner Donald Trump called the state of the union “a mess” and improved employment statistics “a fiction” in an interview on Sunday with NBC News.

Public Attitudes

Public opinion polling suggests that the Republican message is resonating. Just 27 percent of Americans described the country as headed in the right direction, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll released earlier this month. A majority — 54 percent — disapproved of the president’s handling of foreign policy, and only a third of respondents said Obama was doing a good job. Despite a surprisingly strong December jobs report, when employers added 292,000 new jobs, 49 percent of Americans disapprove of the president’s management of the economy. Forty-five percent approve.

To combat those headwinds, Obama hopes to recapture some of the populist appeal that propelled him to two convincing electoral wins. Among those who will watch the speech from first lady Michelle Obama’s box in the House are Edith Childs, the South Carolina activist who coined the president’s “Fired Up! Ready to Go!” campaign slogan, and a Vietnam veteran who inspired Obama on the campaign trail. The hope is to provide a bookend for a president swept to office on a promise to unite a country deeply polarized by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the Great Recession.

“I’m pretty confident that the overwhelming majority of Americans are looking for the kind of politics that does feed our hopes and not our fears, that does work together and doesn’t try to divide us, that isn’t looking for simplistic solutions and scapegoating, but looks for us, you know, buckling down and figuring out how do we make things work for the next generation?” Obama told NBC.

Millennial Voters

In the days before the speech, the White House launched a new Snapchat account featuring behind-the-scenes glances at preparation for the address, and annotated previous speeches on Genius, a website known for explaining rap lyrics. The speech will stream live on both Google Inc.’s YouTube and Amazon Inc.’s streaming video service.

On Wednesday, Obama will sit for interviews with three YouTube stars at the White House, including a 26-year-old fashion and lifestyle blogger and a video game reviewer. Later this month, he’ll travel to Omaha, Nebraska; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Detroit to reinforce themes of his speech. The outreach is aimed particularly at young voters, a key constituency for Obama and the Democratic Party.

Administration officials intend for the nontraditional address, eschewing the usual laundry list of policy proposals, to position Obama above the political fray. Still, the president is expected to pitch at least a few of his policy goals for the year.

Among them: a vote on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, an agreement to lower tariffs and other trade barriers among 12 Asia-Pacific nations; the closing of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; and an overhaul of federal sentencing rules to reduce prison terms for nonviolent drug offenses.

Obama will again highlight his push for new gun-control measures, a week after he moved unilaterally to tighten regulations on unregistered gun sellers. One seat in the First Lady’s box will be left empty as a tribute to people killed in gun violence, and multiple members of Congress have invited shooting victims and gun-control activists to attend the speech as their guests.

To contact the reporter on this story: Justin Sink in Washington at jsink1@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net Alex Wayne, Larry Liebert

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Yes, Mr. Obama knows divisive! His crazy poliicies have made him the most divisive president ever! –W.