We ought to grade people in politics on the basis of where they stand on issues, or problems…

When I look back on what I had to do during eight years in office, I don’t know whether I’m a liberal, or a conservative, or what. There are certain basic truths on which our Government is founded, and you have to use common sense in dealing with different problems as they arise.

In offering a laundry list of programs large and small, Obama’s address was positively Clintonian. But there was a major difference. In his 1996 State of the Union, Clinton chose to bend to the conservative wind that had blown in with the Republican sweep in the previous midterm election. “The era of big government is over,” Clinton declared in one of his most celebrated lines.

Obama, on the other hand, confronts an even more radical and sweeping assault on government, and so he has decided to take it on, forcefully and directly.

There are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of collective amnesia. After all that’s happened, after the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, they want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess. In fact, they want to go back to the same policies that have stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for too many years. Their philosophy is simple: we are better off when everyone is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.

Well, I’m here to say they are wrong. I’m here to reaffirm my deep conviction that we are greater together than we are on our own. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, and when everyone plays by the same rules. Those aren’t Democratic or Republican values; 1% values or 99% values. They’re American values, and we have to reclaim them.