President Obama’s address to Congress tonight was really two speeches in one. The first laid out his jobs plan—substantively, an attempt to forestall a double-dip recession. The second laid out a longer-term economic vision that promised, however vaguely, to restore American manufacturing.
Politically, both plans are aimed at shoring up the president’s support within the Democratic base: the jobs plan by its relative expansiveness (compared to the low-ball estimates the White House was putting out earlier this week so that Democrats would be pleasantly surprised at the plan’s actual scope), the manufacturing plan by its promise to use state power, in some unspecified way, to help restore middle-class jobs.
In September, 2009 Atlantic Monthly named 
