Neither the modest new proposals President Barack Obama outlined in his State of the Union speech, nor the well-crafted, reasonably well-received speech itself, will loom large in either the history of this presidency or the course of the nation.

For one thing, Obama upstaged what passed for news with advance notice of proposals for expanded family leave, free community college and a variety of tax cuts and increases. For another, a presidency’s seventh year is less the time for ground-breaking initiatives than for extending and defending its principal prior policies.

Indeed, Obama’s main purpose Tuesday night was much broader: To define the landscape both for the next two years of dealing with the newly installed Republican congressional majority and for the 2016 debate leading to the election of his presidential successor.

He set an optimistic tone — perhaps unduly so — in describing events both domestic and international, arguing that the “middle-class economics” underlying his presidency have enabled “the shadow of crisis” to pass, at a time when statistics and polls both reflect growing acceptance of that. And he castigated Republicans as still re-fighting an agenda of “taking away ... health insurance or unraveling the new rules on Wall Street or refighting past battles on immigration,” while assuming an economically hurting country still yearns for their trickle-down prescriptions.

Indeed, soon after Obama finished, this year’s designated Republican respondent, freshman Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, confirmed his portrayal by decrying “stagnant wages and lost jobs” and declaring that, among other things, Republicans would “repeal and replace a health care law that’s hurt so many hardworking families.”

To be sure, most Obama domestic proposals, such as increasing taxes on the wealthy to finance needed infrastructure improvements or raising the minimum wage, are as unlikely to pass as Republican bills repealing Obama- care. Legislation to spur trade agreements has a better chance.

But the president was able, as is usually the case with these annual addresses, to make his case to a national audience that almost certainly is more sympathetic to his agenda than Washington’s partisan battles would have one believe.

In part, that’s because his aggressive post-election policy initiatives have not only spurred a modest uptick in his personal job approval but have focused on areas where he and the Democrats have the upper hand, both politically and substantively.

One obvious example is immigration reform, where the Republican-controlled House last week enacted a package of mean-spirited measures aimed at curbing the benefits Obama unilaterally gave millions of undocumented workers, including young people brought here illegally by their parents. He humanized his argument by inviting to the speech a young “Dreamer” from Dallas, Ana Zamora, promptly derided by GOP Rep. Steve King of Iowa as “a deportable.”

A second area was his surprise initiative to restore U.S. relations with Cuba, which Republicans still oppose though polls show the country agrees with Obama that, “when what you’re doing doesn’t work for 50 years, it’s time to try something new.” A third was the joint effort with China on climate change.

Obama might even have defined this year’s political debate on his least popular but most far-reaching achievement, the Affordable Care Act, noting that Republicans want to “put the security of families at risk by taking away their health insurance” at a time millions are getting insured and polls show Americans would rather fix than repeal it.

On virtually every one of these issues, the political divisions in Congress were exemplified by Vice President Joe Biden leading enthusiastic response from his fellow Democrats while House Speaker John Boehner and the GOP majority sat uncomfortably silent.

The most graphic evidence came when Obama launched an appeal for bipartisan cooperation by declaring, “I have no more campaigns to run,” prompting a loud burst of applause from Republicans. “I know, cause I won both of them,” the president ad-libbed, drawing laughter and applause from fellow Democrats.

Tuesday night’s battle lines will recur repeatedly as Obama and his critics maneuver to sway the public on whether the current Congress and the next administration should revise and extend his agenda or repeal and replace it.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News.