Like those of all modern presidents, Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech was filled with agenda-list items, long-held hobby-horse issues of his party, and inflated claims of the success of his own policies. Most of the content could have been lifted from campaign speeches in 2012, probably 2008, and arguably every Democratic campaign for the last 40 years. Kirsten Powers, the liberal analyst on Fox News, wrote in a column for USA Today that the speech made it seem that “President Obama's chief speechwriter has been replaced by a cliché-generator circa 1960.” Among the blizzard of clichés was a...