"The shadow of crisis has passed. The State of the Union is strong."
Bold words for a President who has a habit of saying things that come back to haunt him, but with his approval ratings finally lifting and the economy improving Barack Obama is happy to sound confident again.
The crisis was the 2008 financial crash that caused the Great Recession and if Barack Obama is sounding optimistic he is not the only one. Many Americans seem to share his confidence that, as he put it, the page is finally being turned.
The President could walk into the lion's den of a Republican-controlled US Congress with a spring in his step, thanks to a resurgent US economy. If Republicans were expecting a more conciliatory tone, given the thumping they gave his party in last year's mid-term elections, they will have been sorely disappointed.
This year's State of the Union speech had a very different tone. He has tried pleading in the past, and occasionally preaching to persuade his Republican rivals to co-operate. This year he seemed done with all that.
He mocked them at times, knowing the television pictures would be in his favour. As he suggested opponents of a minimum wage tried living on an annual salary of $15,000 (£10,000) for a week, the pictures cut to rows of well-heeled-looking Republicans sitting glumly as Democrats applauded on their feet.
He listed the ways America is making progress economically and Republicans again did not join the standing ovations, making them look churlish. When he pointed out he had no more elections to win, they could not resist a mocking hand clap, but he had the last laugh with a presidential put down: "I should know. I won both of them," he said with a satisfied grin.
He talked of his yearning for a "better politics" and said he believed cynics were wrong to say gridlock and partisanship were inevitable in Washington.
"I still believe we are one people," he said. Americans, he added, "expect those of us who serve here to set a better example".
But at the same time he is promoting a tax agenda guaranteed to encourage more opposition from his opponents, and he knows it. His plans to pay for middle-class tax breaks with higher taxes for the very rich are a non-starter for Republicans. So why push them?
He may well believe they are the right thing to pursue, but it is also clever politics. Promoting them in a speech watched by 33 million Americans increases his leverage in negotiations with Congress to come.
And he is also hoping to frame the debate as the countdown to the 2016 presidential elections begins.
Income inequality is a big issue in the US and only likely to become more so in the next two years.
Republicans risk alienating voters if they appear to oppose efforts to tackle it. But they'll upset their wealthy patrons if they don't. They could be drawn onto politically treacherous ground.
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