WASHINGTON – In President Obama’s final State of the Union address to Congress, he decided to counter with some calm talk the fear tactics of Donald Trump and the other Republicans striving to replace him.

For nearly an hour, he argued that both the economic and national security calamities they were citing amounted to “political hot air.” Domestically, he noted the halving of the nation’s unemployment rate and the federal deficit, and he insisted that American military supremacy remained unchallenged abroad.

He argued that “it’s not even close” that America “is the most powerful nation on Earth, period,” and that the threat of the Islamic State and its terrorism was not comparable to “the dangers of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union posed an existential threat.”

Such reassurances are not likely to quell fears being fed by Trump and the others on the home front. But at least they are an effort to combat the wave of manufactured panic by the master of exaggeration and deceit who is the current frontrunner for the Republican nomination, and his copycats.

Obama reminded Congress of his success in pulling the country out of the Great Recession. But that achievement has been countered in part by his stalled attempts to end the U.S. involvement in the two inherited wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Even in the latter, however, he claimed to learn valuable lessons.

He said America had found out the hard way that it can’t “try to take over and rebuild every country that falls into crisis. That’s not leadership, that’s a recipe for quagmire, spilling American blood and treasure that ultimately weakens us. It’s the lesson of Vietnam, of Iraq,” he said, “and we should have learned it by now.”

In this latter observation, Obama dinged his predecessor, George W. Bush, for starting the Iraq war that has haunted his seven-year presidency and will continue through its final year. It may explain in part why Obama has resisted Republican saber-rattling, such as Sen. Ted Cruz’ call to “carpet-bomb” the Islamic State.

The closest the president came to acknowledging the damage wrought by Trump was to confess regret “that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better” during his presidency.

But he wisely refrained from engaging him by name, instead reminding his audience that insulting Muslims as a class “is just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world. … It betrays who we are as a country.”

A notable sideline came in the Republican response to Obama from Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, born of naturalized Americans from India and touted by some as a prospective GOP vice-presidential nominee. She warned her party to beware of “the siren call of the angriest voices” in “anxious times” to erect barriers against newcomers from foreign land. She later directly accused Trump of “just irresponsible talk.”

He in turn wasted no time observing on NBC News that he still led lead in the polls, adding, “I wouldn’t say she’s off to a good start. … She’s very weak on illegal immigration, and she certainly has no trouble asking me for campaign contributions.”

In Obama’s final State of the Union address, he didn’t bother to continue his lament against Republican obstructionism in Congress. But he did make passing mention of the failure to pass a new authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) against the Islamic State, which all the Republican presidential nominees have made a centerpiece of their campaigns but failed to rally behind.

In this election year, the issue could engage the candidates of both parties, diverting them from the campaign trail from time to time back to Capitol Hill, from which some have been notably absent.

But for the next three weeks, the looming Iowa precinct caucuses on Feb. 1 and then the New Hampshire primary eight days later will command the political stage.

President Obama will be back on the sidelines, except as a target of more of what he has called “political hot air” from Trump, Cruz and other Republicans eyeing the Oval Office.

Editor’s note: Jules Witcover’s latest book is, “The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power,” published by Smithsonian Books. You can respond to this column at juleswitcover@comcast.net.