State of the Union 2016: Full coverage and analysis

As issues the United States faces have shifted, so has the president’s State of the Union rhetoric.

In 2009, when President Barack Obama delivered his first State of the Union address, the big issues on his mind were the economy (still in the midst of a deep recession) and health care (the issue that would soon become a massive congressional debate).

The most controversial part of the Republican response to the State of the Union on Tuesday night, delivered by Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, was cut out of the version delivered in Spanish by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida.

It wasn’t dropped because it was controversial. It was dropped because it wouldn’t have been.

Early in President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union, there was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it jab at Donald Trump. But later in the speech, Obama really got into it — and he got emotional.

He didn’t say the name Donald Trump, but he didn’t have to. He just talked about the real-life consequences to real Americans when politicians promote exclusion and turn a blind eye to violence.

If President Obama had any hopes of running for a third term, then he lost the international relations scholar vote on Tuesday night when, in the course of his State of the Union address, he repeated one of the biggest canards about how the Middle East works. Here’s the line that launched a thousand “actually”s:

As I pointed out on Twitter, before realizing that every PhD in my feed had beat me to it, the idea that Middle East conflicts “date back millennia” is straight-up factually wrong.

President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address was nominally about “the next five years, 10 years, and beyond.” But its more profound story is a revisiting of the Obama the American people first met in 2004, who offered an optimistic, liberal, and pluralistic vision of American identity to a Democratic audience that desperately wanted to believe his vision of America was the real one.

From the floor of the Fleet Center in Boston at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Obama delivered a fascinating speech that was strangely — and delightfully — at odds with the main message the party was delivering that convention week.

For better or worse, President Obama’s final State of the Union address was not the transformationally different event it had been promoted as. It contained the same callbacks to notable administration accomplishments and dutiful recitation of policy proposals that every State of the Union does.

But the last State of the Union still matters, even if it’s not particularly surprising. And this was a better-delivered address than most. Obama can’t achieve everything with mere rhetoric, but he can use it to bolster political allies, undermine opponents, and express solidarity with key constituencies. And, of course, his attempts can backfire. Here’s who came out ahead Tuesday night — and who took a hit.

President Obama’s State of the Union came in at around 5,400 words. That’s too long. Here’s a version we edited and abridged.

I’m going make this short. Instead of a wish list, I’m going to ask four questions of the next president. (Spoiler: I have the answers!)

Gerrymandering rarely gets primetime political coverage on network TV, but President Barack Obama made an exception during his State of the Union address Tuesday night. He called for a handful of changes to the political system, including redistricting reform, campaign finance reform, and voting rights protections — though he was vague on the details of each.

“If we want a better politics, it’s not enough to just change a congressman or a senator or even a president,” Obama said. “We have to change the system to reflect our better selves.”

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley delivered the Republican response to the State of the Union tonight, a generally thankless task.

As President Obama did in his speech, Haley got in a few jabs at Donald Trump, cautioning against listening to the “loudest voice in the room.”

President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union was a celebration of his presidency’s many achievements — and an admission of its most fundamental failure.

In 2008, Obama’s promise was simple: He would pass sweeping policy changes by bridging the deep divisions in American politics. Eight years later, the irony is clear: He passed sweeping policy changes by widening the deep divisions in American politics.

President Obama opened his last State of the Union with what sounded like a gentle, self-deprecating joke: “For this final one, I’m going to try to make it a little shorter.”

Congress laughed with him. They were in on the joke.

Ten minutes before President Obama is set to deliver his final State of the Union address, the White House posted the entire text on Medium, as they did last year.

Medium claims the text takes 22 minutes to read, but it’s likely to take much longer than that to deliver. Here it is:

There is only one State of the Union. But in 2016, for the fifth time, there will be two official Republican responses to the State of the Union: one in English and one in Spanish.

This year, the Spanish-language response will be delivered by Miami-area Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart. He does not have an easy job.

Each year, the president invites several guests to attend his State of the Union address, seated alongside the first lady in a viewing box.

The guests are typically ridiculously high achievers, people who have written particularly moving letters to the president, individuals emblematic of a point the president is trying to illustrate, or, ideally, all three.

Republicans have selected Nikki Haley, currently serving her second term as governor of South Carolina, to deliver their official response to President Obama’s last State of the Union address in office.

The State of the Union response has long served as a national platform to showcase a rising star in the opposition party. During Obama’s time in office, young Republican responders have included Paul Ryan, who is now speaker of the House, and Marco Rubio, a contender for the party’s presidential nomination.