With 55 sentences beginning or containing the personal pronoun ‘I,’ President Obama sent a strong message from the State of the Union address that he clearly does not second-guess the usage of executive powers on a series of issues in the upcoming year.
  After five years of combat with his Republican colleagues, Obama certainly has realized the hard way that it is high time he takes matters into his own hands.
   On issues of immigration reform, minimum wages and fixing the broken economy, Obama plans to go all out by himself.
   Peter Baker of the New York Times said in an article on Wednesday that Obama used his annual State of the Union address to chart a new path forward relying on his own executive authority.
   “But the defiant with or without Congress approach was more assertive than any of the individual policies he advanced,” Baker said.
   Ravi Perry, assistant professor of the department of political science and public administration at Mississippi State University, said most people perhaps agree that this year is the last full year Obama has the presidential muscle and relevance with mid-term elections coming up in November.
  “I think it is late. He should have been using his executive powers since the beginning. I think he has an opportunity and after he has tried in so many instances, and no matter your partisan point of view, it is the reality that he in fact has tried to work with the Republicans on key issues and has been unsuccessful,” Perry said.
  Experts have argued that Obama has pushed the limit on executive powers when it comes to national security.
   Ilya Somin, professor of law at George Mason University School of Law, said in an email he thinks there are cases where the Obama administration has pushed executive power too far in the national security field.
    “The most significant example was waging a war in Libya in 2011 without congressional authorization, which is required by the United States Constitution,” Somin said.
   The bi-partisan stand-off between the Republicans and Democrats cost the United States economy billions of dollars, when eight million federal workers were out of work for 16 days.
  William Saletan, columnist for slate.com, said in his article after the shutdown titled, “You’ll Pay For This GOP,” if Republicans stage another big fight over the next debt ceiling, then that would be three in a row. It might facilitate a significant political development — the transformation of debt payment into a national security issue.
   “Republicans could become the deadbeat party. Obama seems quite willing to attack them from this angle. And in framing economics as the key to American power, he has reality on his side,” Saletan said.
   Every American president has left a legacy — some we regret and some we cherish. Obama will want to leave his own as the commander-in-chief and as the head of the state.
    He has long understood there is less time on his platter and more work to be done. It will be futile to waste time in congressional bureaucracies, which some call the redtape.
   When Washington’s fighting “prevents us from carrying out even the most basic functions of our democracy — when our differences shut down government or threaten the full faith and credit of the United States — then we are not doing right by the American people,” Obama said.
    David Nakamura, journalist with The Washington Post, wrote in an article Obama sought to restore public confidence in his presidency after a dispiriting year, pledging to use his White House authority with new force to advance an agenda that Congress has largely refused to support.
   “Obama announced a list of executive actions that he will pursue in the coming months aimed at slowing the widening income gap among American families, which the White House has called a top priority for the year. Among them were plans to raise the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $10.10 an hour,” Nakamura said.
   As Americans, we can only hope that issues are addressed and policies are passed. After all, who wants to see the world hegemon shut down its government over personal differences?
   I believe with the State of Union’s dynamic address, there were glimpses of a young  Obama, charged to change America.