Republicans will be looking for an overture they felt was missing from the Inauguration. 5 things to watch for in the SOTU

President Barack Obama on Tuesday gets his second high-profile opportunity in less than a month to set the agenda for his second term.

The president views the speech as finishing a thought that began with the Inauguration, aides say, with a deeper focus on job creation and the economy but no shortage of attention to the controversial social issues that top his to-do list.


Here’s POLITICO’s list of five things to watch in the State of the Union:

1. Soft, strident or somewhere in between?

Obama irritated Republicans with his unapologetically liberal inaugural address — and the lack of any perceived olive branch quickly became the news.

( PHOTOS: State of the Union history: 10 famous lines)

But as Obama prepares to move his agenda into legislation, he’ll need congressional — and at least some Republican — support.

So he has to find a way to do both: Make a robust case for limiting guns, overhauling immigration and protecting entitlement programs but without alienating the party that controls the House and the ability to filibuster in the Senate.

Finding that balance is nearly impossible.

The West Wing would no doubt prefer to use the speech to remind Republicans that elections have consequences — and, by the way, Obama won. His aides question whether any of his past bipartisan gestures really got him anywhere.

And Obama hasn’t exactly moved out of campaign mode.

He’s been traveling the country on immigration and guns and hammering Republicans for more than a week on the across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester. He’s accusing them of wanting automatic cuts “on seniors and middle-class families” to avoid closing “even a single tax loophole that benefits the wealthy.”

( PHOTOS: Memorable guests at the State of the Union)

But Republicans will be looking for an overture that they felt was missing from the Inauguration — though they really don’t want him to get too close.

For example, Obama name-checking the Republicans who are working with Democrats on guns and immigration may look like a magnanimous act to the world outside Washington but here, it could be fatal to the delicate talks.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) put the president on notice, saying Obama needs to soften his rhetoric on the sequester and work with Congress.

( Full coverage: State of the Union 2013)

“Let’s be clear about something: If the President does choose to strike fear into the hearts of folks he should be reassuring, then that decision will be his alone,” McConnell said Monday. “And that’s why the next time the president delivers some over-the-top speech flanked by some pollster-approved voter group, I hope someone on the stage taps him on the shoulder and asks: Mr. President, if you’re truly worried about this issue, why aren’t you working with the Congress we elected to prevent it?”

2. Will there be a breakthrough jobs plan?

It would be déjà vu, at this point, for Obama to use a high-profile speech to talk about jobs, the economy and the middle class — he’s been doing that for four years.

( POLITICO’s White House team previews State of the Union 2013)

With the Commerce Department reporting last month that the economy shrank in the final quarter of 2012, surprising experts who expected some growth, there’s political and practical urgency. But the challenge for Obama is to come up with fresh job proposals that stand any chance of passing a deeply divided Congress.

The White House is also looking to push back on a narrative that the president hasn’t focused on the economy, instead pursuing immigration, gay rights, guns and climate change. The criticism emerged after the inaugural address, when these issues dominated and jobs were barely mentioned, and was hardened by the latest economic figures.

“The president has always viewed the two speeches, the inaugural address and the State of the Union, as two acts in the same play,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said. “And the fact is, while there was a focus on some of the other elements of the inaugural address, that the core emphasis that he has always placed in these big speeches remains the same and will remain the same, which is the need to make the economy work for the middle class.”

Aides said the president will push for investments in four areas: infrastructure, strengthening the manufacturing sector, clean energy and education. None of this is particularly surprising.

The details are key, signaling whether Obama is serious about getting something passed or he’s simply looking for an issue to use against Republicans. A stimulus package — “investments,” in the president’s words — won’t go anywhere in the Republican-controlled House.

3. How far does he go on guns?

The big question is not whether Obama will mention his gun push but which part of it he will emphasize — and how much the issue will dominate the night.

There has been little support beyond Obama and Vice President Joe Biden for a proposed assault weapons ban, and virtually all of the White House’s gun efforts have been focused on universal background checks — which has yet to receive much support from Republicans in the House or Senate.

Gun control is part of a responsibility to protect the nation’s children, Obama says, and on Tuesday he’ll call for congressional action, boasting of bipartisan agreements in place on background checks and new anti-trafficking laws.

Obama will travel later in the week to his hometown of Chicago, which has seen a recent spike in gun violence. But on Tuesday night, he’ll look out at many victims of gun violence and their family members — the administration and its gun control allies are bringing 120 of them to the White House on Tuesday for a briefing and dozens of members of Congress gave their single guest ticket to the victims of gun violence and their families to watch from the gallery.

Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and her husband, Mark Kelly, will be in the audience. The parents of Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old Chicago girl shot and killed weeks after performing at Obama’s Inauguration, will sit with first lady Michelle Obama.

“When he talks about guns, he’s going to have enormous support in the gallery and in the country,” said Mark Glaze, the director of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns. “Ultimately, we think he’ll have it in the Congress too.”

4. What will the Obama vs. Rubio dynamic be?

Obama will have to do something he’s not used to: share the stage.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), whose meteoric rise has been compared with Obama’s, will deliver the Republican response to the State of the Union, a proving ground for potential presidential candidates. And his performance may generate as much post-game punditry on the cable news shows as the president’s.

But there’s another dynamic at play.

The path to a bipartisan immigration deal runs through Rubio’s office. He’s been a linchpin of the Senate working group by lending instant credibility to the immigration overhaul effort on the right.

Publicly, White House aides have been nonchalant about Rubio. Behind the scenes, they are intrigued by his every move. Does Obama acknowledge Rubio or continue to ignore him?

For Rubio, the calculus is tougher: He must appeal to Republicans searching for an Obama alternative for 2016 and present and defend the broad GOP agenda, all while not alienating the base by getting too close to Obama.

“From Rubio’s point of view, it’s less offering a rebuttal of the president’s speech and more an audition for a leading role in a future Republican Party,” said Jim Kessler, the senior vice president of the centrist think tank Third Way.

Democrats aren’t hiding their interest in Rubio’s Republican response — Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz hosted a conference call Monday to whack the Florida senator before his rebuttal to President Barack Obama.

Yet that call focused not on immigration, where Rubio has broad agreements with Obama and is considered a leader of GOP thought, but on his support for Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposals and position on the sequester.

5. What’s the hashtag?

In the 140-character world of 2013, Obama’s State of the Union speech is certain to come with a theme both descriptive and ready to share.

If history repeats, Obama’s speech will come with an evergreen theme he will tie to current times. Needing a final boost for his health care reform, in 2010, Obama’s theme was “We won’t quit, I won’t quit.”

After being gashed in the midterm elections, in 2011, Obama offered a more aspirational “We do big things” and a call to “Our generation’s Sputnik moment” as he urged people to get behind his “winning the future” slogan.

And building into his reelection campaign, Obama in 2012 described his vision as “An America built to last.”

One possibility for Tuesday night: “Now is the time,” the phrase Obama and Biden have used repeatedly to describe the White House gun control push.

It came with an officially sanctioned hashtag and folds seamlessly into Obama’s agenda for immigration, the sequester and his economic agenda.