After opening his 2012 State of the Union address by paying tribute to the men and women in uniform, President Obama turned his attention to what he called “the defining issue of our time.” Eschewing the cliché of the “American dream” in favor of what he called the “American promise,” he nevertheless went on to sound the dream's key notes: if you work hard and play by the rules, you should enjoy a financially secure life and pass on an even better one to your children. As in other speeches, Obama relied on the example of his grandparents to humanize his argument. His grandfather served as a soldier in World War II, and his grandmother as a laborer on a bomber assembly line. They embodied a generation and an era that “gave rise to the largest middle class and the strongest economy that the world has ever known.”