The former president casts a shadow over the State of the Union. He's baaaaack.

When the president enters the House chamber tomorrow night to deliver his maiden State of the Union address, members of Congress, the press, and the public will see Barack Obama at the podium. But they will have Bill Clinton on their minds.

Specifically they will be thinking of 1995, when a humbled Mr. Clinton addressed a newly Republican Congress after his own health-care proposals went down in flames. Though President Obama's party still holds the majority in both houses, it is a scared majority that has been unnerved by the unpopularity of the president's signature policy issue (health care) and terrified by the loss to Republicans of what they all, with David Gergen, regarded as the "Kennedy seat." So whatever Mr. Obama says tomorrow night, his words will inevitably be compared with the speech Mr. Clinton used to rescue his own presidency. READ MORE