See email from Ed below and post your thoughts:
Couple of nuggets for background from officials here:
–The President has been heavily involved in the speech, has been through several drafts
–there will not be a lot of talk about accomplishments in the first term, wants to make it more forward looking, vision for the future
–a major theme will be how he wants to move the nation forward in the days ahead by leaning on some of the nation’s “founding values” that are still relevant today, especially the idea of a vibrant democracy where not every major issues gets resolved but we have vigorous debates
–President will make the case that those unresolved debates should not stop all sides from agreeing to the things they can find common ground
–So there will be some obvious allusions to how there’s some middle ground to be had on issues like guns, immigration reform, deficit reduction – and he will make the case that just because both sides can’t agree to everything does not mean they should leave on the table the pieces of it they can agree on
–Nevertheless, this will NOT be a deep policy dive – instead he will stick to big picture like most of these Inaugural Addresses are – State of the Union in February will be the deep policy dive
–President sees the two speeches as bookends – Inaugural speech lays out the broader values, the State of the Union will give more of a granular description of what he wants on gun control, immigration etc
