The State of the Union is like the Super Bowl. There’s always a big buildup. It gets a large TV audience. The real action takes only an hour. And, after it’s over, it’s analyzed to death and then largely forgotten.

And so it will be tonight. Some 30 million Americans will watch — a number that has declined steadily for years — and they won’t hear much that is new. President Obama will ask for little from Congress, and that’s about all he’ll get, given that both the Senate and House are controlled by Republicans. Some ideas that he has already floated — free tuition for community college and paid sick leave for workers — are interesting but won’t get far with the GOP, and the president knows it. The president will say tonight that, without more cooperation, he’ll have no choice but to act on his own, as he has over the past few years (more on this in a minute).

What Obama does know is that he leaves office exactly two years from today. As all presidents do, he’s thinking about legacy, and if he were smart he’d just hold up this morning’s Wall Street Journal, which says:

“An upswing in the U.S. economy has contributed to a surge in economic optimism. …Half the public said the past year brought important economic improvements, a postrecession high, while more than four in 10 said they are satisfied with the state of the economy, the most upbeat reading in more than eight years.”

That same newspaper on Monday noted that unemployment, the deficit and gasoline prices are all down quite sharply. Also down: the number of Americans on food stamps and the number of people on the federal payroll.

It could be, as Ronald Reagan liked to say, “morning in America,” except that Reagan actually increased the federal workforce and tripled the federal debt during his eight years in office.

So look for a bit of boasting from Obama tonight. The economy is clearly getting better. But the president, whose own approval stands at an 18-month high (though it’s well below 50%) still won’t ask for much from lawmakers — it’s just a waste of time.

It’s interesting to go back and look at what Obama has asked for in past State of the Union addresses and what he has gotten. It’s frankly a mixed record, and in some cases his fellow Democrats joined Republicans in blocking him. Here’s a sampling of some of his biggest financial and economic ideas and what happened with them:

• In 2009, with the economy in free fall, he said his economic recovery plan would “save or create” 3.5 million jobs, 90% of them in the private sector. What happened? The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office claims that, as of 2012, the Obama plan had cut the unemployment rate between 0.1 and 0.6 percentage points.

• In 2009, Obama said big banks would be held accountable for the “reckless decisions” that helped spark the economic collapse. Were they? You be the judge. In June 2011, Bank of America BAC, -0.55% , Wells Fargo WFC, +0.08% , J.P. Morgan JPM, -0.21% and 10 other banks settled with the feds for $9.3 billion; In 2012: Wells Fargo, Citigroup C, -1.47% and three others agreed to pay $25 billion; and two years ago, J.P. Morgan agreed to a $13 billion settlement. Yet, in all that time, only one top banking executive has actually gone to jail in connection with the crisis. In other words, banks, but not people, were made to pay.

• In 2009 he proposed an energy bill that would, among other things, impose a market-based cap on carbon emissions. The House, then controlled by Democrats, passed it, but it went nowhere in the Senate, as even Democrats from oil and gas states opposed it. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed new rules cutting carbon emissions. The administration’s latest move on this front — tackling methane, whose emissions are said to be up to 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide — was unveiled last week.

• In 2009, he promised to “cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office.” It didn’t fall 50% in four years as he promised — but it did fall 67% in six years.

• In 2010, he proposed limits on what lobbyists can contribute to federal elections; Congress never acted. He also proposed freezing federal spending for three years — with two giant exceptions: defense and entitlements. Result: Nondefense discretionary spending was essentially flat during this period. And he proposed an overhaul of financial industry regulations. The Dodd-Frank bill passed within months. But talk about the fox guarding the hen house: Parts of it were written with the help of financial-industry lobbyists, and some critics say Dodd-Frank actually failed to address the true causes of the financial crisis.

In 2011, after Republicans regained control of the House, gridlock set in. This is when the president began to act unilaterally wherever he could. A sampling:

•The president again proposed and failed to get a clean energy bill to eliminate tax breaks for oil and gas companies, and to boost investments in renewable energy. He instructed the Environmental Protection Agency — begun by a Republican president, Richard Nixon, by the way — to cut greenhouse-gas emissions on its own.

•In 2011, Obama called for a sweeping immigration reform bill. Three years later, with no bill ever sent to him (the Senate passed one, but not the House), he used his executive authority to shield as many as 5 million illegal immigrants from deportation and to make other changes to the system. House lawmakers were outraged but still haven’t come up with a bill of their own.

•In 2012, Obama proposed that companies that ship U.S. jobs overseas be denied tax breaks. Nothing happened. Last September, his Treasury Department tweaked the tax code to dissuade companies from moving overseas.

• In 2013, he called for a “Fix It First” program to repair bridges and other infrastructure; Congress has not authorized any major infrastructure projects since the speech was given.

• In 2014, he proposed a patent-reform bill that would ease regulatory and legal burdens for companies; Congress has not acted. The president also proposed to stop companies from moving jobs overseas; last September the Treasury Department, using the tax code, embarked on efforts to do just that. Congress also balked at his proposal to raise the nation’s minimum wage to $10.10, so he signed an executive order requiring that workers on federal contracts be paid at least that much (many states have raised the minimum wage on their own in the past year, anyway).

Since most of the ideas Obama will discuss tonight will be received by Republicans as they have for several years now — with silence and inaction — Obama will continue, if not step up, his use of executive power. He’ll complain about lack of cooperation from Republicans. But perhaps, given the improving economy, he doesn’t need them anyway.