What Will President Obama's Job Speech Look Like?

President Obama is scheduled to speak on jobs at 7pm tonight. While we will have a follow up post, here are some guesses about what the speech will look like. The first two are pretty plausible, and the second two are just guesses:

1. The President will take the center ground.
One of the President's biggest problems has been an inability to get any sort of bipartisan action in Congress. Therefore, he will probably want to either co-opt some Republican ideas or refer to proposals that have gained bipartisan support in the past. If he succeeds and Congressional Republicans oppose the proposals, he could go into the campaign saying that Republicans prioritize obstruction over ideas that they themselves support.

2. The President will continue the theme he invoked in his debt ceiling debate - compromise a la Henry Clay.
The President will likely deride the partisan atmosphere of Congress and frame himself as a compromiser focused on the national interest and frame Republicans as purely political creatures.

3. The President could invoke "competitiveness."
While this, in our opinion, would be a bad idea, "competitiveness" is an idea that has gained a lot of currency with members of the Obama administration. It was the dominant theme of President Obama's most recent State of the Union address. President Obama could use it to hint at concerns about the U.S. relative position in the world and a rising China and promote policies ranging from education to green jobs.

4. Green jobs.
The President tried to tie the concern over jobs and momentum for energy/environmental legislation together during his first campaign, leading some of us to think that he was going to push a package that involved so-called "green jobs" instead of the eventual health care reform legislation. With the increasing influence of Senate stars like John Kerry, President Obama may be willing to include a green jobs message again.

If so, President Obama might have to explain his recent, bewildering move on loosening smog regulations. Perhaps he would use it to play the compromise card, saying that since he is willing to back away from Democratic priorities for the national interest, Republicans should support him on a green jobs proposal.