Predicting President Barack Obama's State of the Union address

For his State of the Union address on Wednesday, President Barack Obama will most likely be talking about domestic concerns like the debate on health care and the economic recession.
President Barack Obama has made many speeches and proclamations since he has been in office and, based off three of those speeches, he is passionate about the same views that past presidents have been about. These past presidents who were in similar times of war and economic ups and downs that Obama is in now are John F. Kennedy with Vietnam and the Cold War, Herbert Hoover with the Great Depression, and Franklin Roosevelt in the midst of World War II and the Great Depression.
Kennedy in his State of the Union address on Jan. 11, 1962 and Hoover in his address Dec. 8, 1931 both aimed to make America successful again in those difficult times by focusing on the domestic issues. Even when American troops were involved in wars around the rest of the globe and in Hoover’s case, the world faced a depression, both presidents realized that to fix these world-wide problems, the issues of Americans had to be settled first.
Kennedy said, “For our nation is commissioned by history to be either an observer of freedom’s failure or the cause of its success.” America had to be well-off first before they could worry about how to take care of the rest of the world’s biggest issues.
Franklin Roosevelt started America’s theme of being responsible for the rest of the world and for a need to worry about the big picture, when he united the Allies in his State of the Union address on Jan. 6, 1942. He made Americans want freedom not just for themselves but for the rest of the world as well.
One foundation of freedom is democracy and Kennedy’s and Hoover’s speeches addressed those issues that are directly part of democracy. Those issues are to support the individual and the private institutions from being encroached upon by the federal government. Kennedy said, “The dynamic of democracy is the power and purpose of the individual.”
In Obama’s previous speeches he calls on these same issues as well. During an address before a joint session of congress on Feb. 24, 2009, Obama alludes to the bold actions and big decisions past presidents had to make in “moments of economic upheaval and transformation.” He said these actions involved the government building up private enterprise and helping individuals to create a stronger economy that people could have confidence in.
In one of Obama’s recent addressees on Dec. 10, 2009 for the speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, his theme was peace. He said peace required responsible actions and that “only a just peace based on the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting.”
These words from the previous Nobel Peace Prize address, based off the similarity they have to the past speeches of Kennedy, Hoover and Roosevelt, prove that Obama will mostly focus on domestic issues, most pertaining to individual rights and private institutions to create confidence in the economy.
To instill confidence in the people, Obama must address the issues that are most important to the individual. According to The Huffington Post and the U.S. World News Web site, usnews.com, the people are most worried about health care and jobs.
Most likely Obama will outline direct answers to these problems and other domestic issues concerning the stability of banks, cleaner energy use and education. In his Feb. 24 address, Obama said he would focus on these long-term issues to remake America and get the economy settled back on track once and for all.