Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University and the author, with Kevin Kruse, of the new book "Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974." The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.

(CNN) On February 5, President Donald Trump will finally get to deliver his State of the Union address after agreeing to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's request to hold off on the speech during the 35-day government shutdown. Pelosi will certainly be sitting in the House chamber on Tuesday — right behind Trump, alongside Vice President Mike Pence and in constant view of the cameras -- with a good deal of pride, after essentially forcing him to accept a bill to fund the government through February 15, and without any money for his border wall.

Julian Zelizer

The tension between Trump and the Democratic speaker will be the most interesting thing to watch for Tuesday night, given that it may indicate the drama that will play out in coming months. Without question, Pelosi is the most lethal political threat to this presidency. The House has the power to issue subpoenas, launch investigations and hearings and initiate impeachment proceedings. Trump's fate may very well be shaped by her decisions.

This won't be the first time in US history that a president has been at odds with the House speaker. When the State of the Union was first televised in 1947, Democrat Harry Truman took to the podium after a remarkable change in House leadership. The speaker, Massachusetts Rep. Joe Martin, was the first Republican to take on the role since Democrats dominated the lower chamber in 1933. Truman went on to fight the Republicans in his effort to expand on Franklin Roosevelt's legacy, and later campaigned against a "do-nothing" Congress in 1948.

In January 1974, President Richard Nixon famously told the nation, "I believe the time has come to bring that investigation and the other investigations of this matter to an end. One year of Watergate is enough." Speaker Carl Albert must have sat there thinking about the congressional and prosecutorial investigations that had put Nixon in an incredibly precarious position. The coming months proved as tumultuous as anything Albert could have imagined. Six months after Nixon's address, the House completed its investigation and voted for articles of impeachment, which led to Nixon's resignation in August.

When President Ronald Reagan delivered his first State of the Union address in January 1982, Democratic Speaker Tip O'Neill sat behind him, no doubt struggling to make sense of the conservative revolution that threatened all the New Deal and Great Society programs he held dear. One year later, O'Neill looked a bit more confident after the midterms greatly strengthened the Democratic majority in the House and gave his party a platform from which to fight the Republican administration.

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