Hey --

Every year it's the same: In the days leading up to the State of the Union, the phone rings off the hook with everyone trying to figure out what will be in the President's address.

We're now just four days out -- and the President wanted you to get the first preview of what this speech is all about. As always, he'll be working on it right up until game time, but three words sum up the President's message on Tuesday night: opportunity, action, and optimism.

The core idea is as American as they come: If you work hard and play by the rules, you should have the opportunity to succeed. Your ability to get ahead should be based on your hard work and ambition and who you want to be, not just the raw circumstance of who you are when you're born.

On Tuesday night, the President will lay out a set of real, concrete, practical proposals to grow the economy, strengthen the middle class, and empower all who hope to join it.

RSVP now and watch the enhanced State of the Union on WhiteHouse.gov this Tuesday night:

In this year of action, the President will seek out as many opportunities as possible to work with Congress in a bipartisan way. But when American jobs and livelihoods depend on getting something done, he will not wait for Congress.

President Obama has a pen and he has a phone, and he will use them to take executive action and enlist every American -- business owners and workers, mayors and state legislators, young people, veterans, and folks in communities from across the country -- in the project to restore opportunity for all.

It will be an optimistic speech. Thanks to the grit and determination of citizens like you, America has a hard-earned right to that optimism. Five years after the President inherited the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, our businesses have created more than eight million new jobs in the past 46 months, and they're primed to create more.

With some action on all our parts, we can help more jobseekers find work, and more working Americans find the economic security they deserve. That's why, in the week following the speech, President Obama will travel to communities across the country -- including Prince George’s County Maryland, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and Nashville, before returning to the White House to outline new efforts to help the long-term unemployed.

You need to tune in on Tuesday -- because this is about you.

Thanks,

Dan

Dan Pfeiffer
Senior Advisor
The White House
@Pfeiffer44

P.S. -- Senior White House staff (myself included) will take to our computers and answer as many of your questions as we can the day after the big speech. We want you to be a part of it -- check it out now.