The contrast couldn’t have been greater. And it’s one Americans will see over and over throughout 2016.

For months, Republican presidential candidates have used their debates and their many other platforms to portray the United States as facing disaster at home and abroad, blaming President Barack Obama’s policies. The state of the union, GOP front-runner Donald Trump said, is “a mess.”

On Tuesday night, Obama took what might be his last major opportunity to counter that picture by presenting Congress and the nation an accounting of the progress since he inherited the worst domestic economy since the Great Depression some 75 years earlier.

“The state of our union is strong,” Obama said, declaring that “anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.” And he hailed a record including “the longest streak of private-sector job creation in history,” the auto industry’s “best year ever” and the access of 17 million more Americans to health care.

The president’s final State of the Union speech summed up an impressive record of domestic accomplishment. But it also provided the basis for Democrat candidates to challenge the GOP’s exaggerated claims of national decline.

Obama listed specific issues like gun control, criminal justice reform and trade where he hopes for progress before leaving office. But he also addressed the bitter partisanship of recent years, urging bipartisan efforts to “fix our politics” and declaring “one of the few regrets of my presidency (is) that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse, instead of better.”

In doing so, however, he failed to acknowledge how much his sharp attacks on GOP critics -- for example, saying foes of the Iran nuclear agreement were making “common cause” with Iranian hard-liners -- has angered Republicans, and did not hesitate to take some not-so-veiled shots at several Republicans hoping to succeed him.

Having earlier Tuesday told NBC News’ “Today” show he could only imagine Trump giving a State of the Union speech on “Saturday Night Live,” he said it was wrong for politicians to “insult Muslims,” presumably referring to Trump’s call to halt Muslim immigration. He also said answering threats like the Islamic State requires “more than tough talk or calls to carpet-bomb civilians,” alluding to a statement by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. (Interestingly, in her official Republican response, Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina also seemed to target Trump, warning against the “temptation” to follow “the siren call of the angriest voices.”)

Obama’s speech underscored the political dilemma facing Democrats: Despite the tangible economic achievements Obama cited, many Americans have not felt the economic recovery, leaving Americans sharply divided over his presidency. His Democratic base remains strong, but a slim overall margin rates him unfavorably and a large majority says the country remains headed in the wrong direction.

Despite some international successes, such as killing Osama bin Laden and extricating most U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans are most critical of Obama’s handling of events abroad, especially the terrorist threats from the Islamic State which he insisted, while posing “an enormous danger” to individuals, “do not threaten our national existence.”

The president cited the Iranian nuclear agreement on a night that much-criticized measure may have helped him avoid a major embarrassment following Tuesday’s Persian Gulf incident in which Iranians captured 10 American sailors on a ship that went off course into their territorial waters. Thanks to improved relations between the two countries, U.S. officials were able to arrange their release by the time Americans awoke Wednesday.

Meanwhile, by devoting three-fourths of Tuesday’s speech to domestic affairs, Obama acknowledged that his role in history, beyond his election as the country’s first president of color, hinges on the long-term impact of a domestic record that journalist Michael Grunwald wrote recently in Politico “has produced much more sweeping change than most of his supporters or detractors realize.”

In fact, even some Republicans acknowledge the impact of the array of health, education, energy and financial measures enacted under Obama. Former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, writing in The Wall Street Journal, called him, along with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, “one of the three most transformative presidents in the past century.”

But supporters like Grunwald and critics like Gramm disagree on whether that transformation has been beneficial. That debate, like Obama’s speech, will define the 2016 campaign.

By Carl P. Leubsdorf
(Tribune Content Agency)

Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. -- Ed.