Washington:
Battered by voters who seemed confused by his goals, his signature plan for health care reform in doubt, President Barack Obama will walk into the House of Representatives on Wednesday night facing the delicate task of redefining his presidency.
Democrats say Obama will use his first State of the Union address to refocus his administration around a single theme - his party as the defender of a beleaguered middle class.
His speech will be less ambitious, more clearly framed and more singularly focused on the economy - a concession to the success Republicans have had casting health care reform and other agenda items as a distraction.
"There have been some missteps and in some ways an overly ambitious agenda," said Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo.
"Abraham Lincoln had this saying: 'You fight one war at a time,' " he said. "The focus has got to be on small businesses, on jobs and on the people in the middle," Perlmutter said.
That's a far cry from a year ago, when White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel famously told the Wall Street Journal, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," and said Democrats had an opportunity to address big-ticket domestic issues like energy, health care, education and regulatory reform, among others.
A year removed from the excitement of his inaugural, Obama now seems much more life-sized, facing questions whether he is as good a politician as he is unquestionably an inspiring wordsmith.
Swept into office in a landslide and commanding big majorities in Congress, Obama a year ago had cast a wide net, hoping to show voters that Democrats could take on and solve some of the most difficult policy problems of the time.
Even many allies question whether he stood too aloof for too long as Congress became mired in a bitter debate over health care.
"While by now we know that he will be incredibly eloquent and articulate, there is a sense in which people are now more skeptical of just eloquence.
They want to know how you translate eloquence into action and there is this growing feeling that talk is cheap," said Louis Masur, a cultural historian at Trinity College in Connecticut.
Much of Obama's agenda is now deeply uncertain, with Democrats frequently mentioning just three priorities - financial regulation reform, a jobs bill and a pared-down version of health care legislation.
When the White House this week announced a middle-class initiative that would be a central theme in Wednesday night's speech, it was most notable for its modesty: a small expansion in aid for families caring for elderly relatives, a cap on student loan payments for recent graduates, and doubling the child care tax credit for families earning less than $85,000 a year.
"It looks like he's going to try a Clintonian move of offering economic programs that can't be tagged as big government liberalism," said Julian Zelizer, a congressional expert at Princeton University.
"On the one hand, he's saying he'll make jobs the focus, on the other, he's announced these relative minor items and it's unclear they're going to do much to deal with unemployment," he said.
"He's a defensive president at this point," Zelizer said. "He doesn't seem to be willing to go out and reshape the debate. He seems to be reacting to the limits he finds."
If Obama's second year is less focused on legislative heft and more on message, that seems fine with many Democrats on Capitol Hill.
As they've studied the poll results from this month's devastating loss of a once-secure Senate seat in Massachusetts, Democrats have concluded that GOP candidate Scott Brown did a better job of channeling voter anger, but that populism isn't partisan and can be equally wielded by Democrats.
The call for a freeze in non-defense discretionary spending that Obama will highlight Wednesday night will only save about $25 billion a year over the next decade, but it's an area "where a ton of insider games are played," according to a senior Democratic aide on Capitol Hill.
"It's less important whether he scales back on a bill here or there as opposed to reframing the narrative that he presented during his campaign of really looking out for the little guy," the aide said.
"People need to see how you're standing up to Wall Street or health insurance companies. Some people might cast that as populism, but people right now people are angry because they don't feel Washington, D.C., is looking out for them."
But if Obama's speech Wednesday night simply presses a scaled down version of the same agenda, Republicans say he will have missed the point of declining poll numbers and the Massachusetts election.
"Will the American people be a little less angry at them, yeah maybe so," said Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo. But if they aren't bringing Republicans into the equation, I don't think it will make much of a difference."
"They would not be in this position today if in fact they were bipartisan from the beginning. They have dug themselves a hole and I'm not sure they know how to get out of it," Coffman said.