How They See It, January 25, 2015

1. The Washington Post

President [Barack] Obama declared on Tuesday night that "we have risen from recession freer to write our own future than any other nation on earth." Economic indicators - jobs, growth, [petrol] prices - are indeed more favourable. And yet his State of the Union address was Obama's first to a joint session of Congress controlled by Republicans ... Obama appears to have learned that Democrats need to rebrand themselves as the party of "middle-class economics" to recapture an electorate dangerously susceptible to Republican messages - and that the newly buoyant economy provides the opportunity for measures aimed at easing inequality and shoring up the rewards to work. Washington

2. The Guardian

It would be wrong, morally as well as politically, to pretend that this State of the Union speech is without any importance at all. America needs to hear its president talk in prime time about issues such as immigration, race and climate change, even though Congress has no intention of supporting the president on any of them. Obama also has a good story to tell in the shape of the economic growth rate, which rose to 5 per cent at the end of 2014. Yet the big debate in America in 2016, as in Britain's election this year, will be about tough measures to reverse rising levels of inequality. This time next year, Obama's political leverage will be diminishing fast in the manner so familiar from recent two-term presidencies. London