Look closely at Obama’s State of the Union address, and you see not a progressive colossus poised to conquer all in his path, but a mostly spent force, desperately trying to figure out how to get anything done at all. His main policy ambition was to keep from getting the blame for his own idea: the sequester.

◼ Operation Hubris - Jonah Goldberg/National Review

...The remainder of Obama’s agenda was fairly pathetic boilerplate. Hike the minimum wage! Redesign America’s schools! Manufacturing hubs! Make-work programs!

This is supposed to be liberalism reborn? Lame ideas cribbed from a playbook with 60 years of dust on it? Slogans hatched by pols who needed a few more nouns to round out Obama’s sentences? Legislative initiatives that will cost Democrats seats in 2014 and beyond?

Obama’s State of the Union had the lowest ratings in 13 years for a reason — and it’s not that America is excited for a new golden age of liberalism. The momentum Obama feels is the pull of gravity, as he starts his fall.